Gaochun Transport Interchange in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, provides a new rail station located in a planned commercial centre. The building sits on, over and under one of the many intersections of four urban movement systems in Goachun: train, bus, private vehicles and pedestrian networks. It performs both a tying together and a keeping apart of the four systems. The architects perceived the site as two ‘seas’ of pragmatics: a sea of bitumen (for buses and cars) and a sea of paving (for pedestrians). The bus station is a habitable and stable (but not static) piece of infrastructure: a bridge that spans the sea of bitumen. In contrast, the train station is a large-scale op-art piece that straddles the rail line, becoming an island between the paving and the bitumen. The various pragmatic elements of the program are spread along the rail line. This assemblage of smaller elements is wrapped with a series of dynamic blades of varying lengths, which, when viewed at speed, create a kinetic veil.