History and Architectural Design
The modern Sants station was built in the 1970s as part of construction of the first east-west regional line running under the centre of Barcelona. Over the last 30 years, Estació de Sants has since eclipsed the earlier França terminus (Barcelona Estació de França), from the 1920s, as Barcelona’s main railway station.
The station has been built in a modern airport style, with all its many platforms sited underground in something of a subterranean sprawl. Nevertheless the ongoing redevelopment, set to take until 2012, has aimed to make the surface-level concourse and ticket-hall area considerably more spacious and bright. Above this, a four-star hotel (Hotel Barceló Sants) occupies most of the upper floors of its main building.
Read more about this topic: Barcelona Sants Railway Station
Famous quotes containing the words history and/or design:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)