Madinah Station

This guide to Madinah Station walks through how Foster and Partners, Buro Happold and Dar Al Riyadh designed one of four new stops on the Haramain high speed railway without it feeling like an airport dropped into the desert. It traces their answer, a colonnade of freestanding steel arches scaled up into a departures hall, and explains why Madinah's version was tinted a vivid green borrowed from the dome of the Prophet's Mosque nearby. Look up at the small openings cut into the vault above you as you pass through.