A dramatic setting at the foot of Table Mountain for a new dramatic urban hub includes retail and student living right on the forecourt of the iconic Cape Town Station in the Cape Town CBD. The project was completed in December 2023.
The re-development of the Forecourt to the Cape Town Central Station for a new retail and student living accommodation presented the opportunity to re-address the public interface between the station concourse and the CBD.
At the core of the 6 700m2 development is ground floor retail and a purpose built student accommodation facility with 3 085 student beds in a 20 storey tower block including student outdoor recreation space, sports courts, lounges, a raked floor cinema and well equipped gymnasium, ensuring students have a comfortable and enriching living experience. Complementing this is a world class public square, serving as a vibrant gathering space in the heart of the CBD and on the main axial boulevard between Table Mountain and the Table Bay.
This has been achieved through a permeable sequence of spaces with a ground floor retail galleria, a covered retail street and an open public square lined with food outlets, providing linkages to the existing city grid and direct connections through the new spaces into the station concourse.
The robust urban site, materials & finishes reflect a limited hard landscape palette.
A feature of the urban square is the subtle grade separation providing a series of stepped seating edges and generous flowing low planter seating edges framing the space and accommodating the large existing Ficus trees. A splash pad water feature provides an activity focus and calming effect to the urban square. Vertical façade planting provides a vertical visual extension to the landscape.
Private courtyards at upper levels within the residential envelope extend the design language to the upper levels, introducing flowing stepped seating decks framed with container planting providing human scale to the dramatic vertical light well spaces.
The heritage context is re-imagined through the introduction of a central paving band which identifies the approximate position of the original Table Bay shoreline prior to the gradual expansion of the city and construction of the Foreshore reclamation project completed in 1947.
A future Phase includes a new hotel which will complete the southern portion and reinforce the public interface with the urban square.
Rendered images provided by Boogertman + Partners.