What a silly question really! What is a train station? But at the same time the purpose of the station has become different to the one which was intended. The vogue for some time now is that places should be exciting meeting places instead of functional and streamlined.
Therefore to enable this the main hall of the Stockholm train station was turned into a tennis court a few weeks ago. On several occasions the stations at both Stockholm and Göteborg have been turned into virtual conference and exhibition halls. On other times the stations have been used by talk show hosts and as locations for fashion shows.
Yesterday in Stockholm there was a decorative piece intended to signify that the station was more than a station. It was a floating dinner table.
The problem with all this is that the events occur at the expense of function. I don’t want to be met, challenged, entertained, amused, educated, dined or sold – I just want to catch a train! In their haste to renew themselves the train station is forgetting that it is basically a function to facilitate mass transportation.