All Aboard Florida is the first privately owned, operated and financed express intercity passenger rail project in the United States. The 235-mile network of rail lines connects stations in Miami and Orlando with additional hubs in West Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale. All Aboard Florida’s new train fleet, Brightline, not only connects these key cities, it also connects people, communities, and cultures.

Global Architecture & Design Awards 2018
Third Award | Transportation (Built)

©Rockwell Group

Our firms LAB conducted months of extensive ethnographic research to conceive the Brightline name, brand platform, identity, and groundbreaking travel concept. With this bedrock of research and branding in hand, All Aboard Florida asked the LAB to design Brightline’s trains, inside and out. Our firm followed suit with an interior design concept for all four rail stations.

Brightline Identity

Over 6 months, the LAB at our firm conducted local in-home interviews with target travelers and observing travel experiences on the road and rails and in the air—to shape the concept, brand offering, name and identity for All Aboard Florida’s new rail service. The result, Brightline, represents an entirely new experience in travel, grounded in the LAB’s research. Brightline therefore offers the best, most reliable Wi-Fi, delicious, simple food, clean and airy accommodations, and personal, immersive entertainment. Brightline’s visual identity reflects this entrepreneurial, welcoming, and thoughtful personality with its fresh and playful graphics. The brand platform developed by the LAB serves as a guidebook for the Brightline ethos.

Brightline stations are transportation and social hubs in their respective cities. Our firm developed a common design concept, aesthetic and material palette to connect the terminals. The interiors will include back- painted glass, stainless steel (brushed, blackened and polished) and Corian. All four stations will feature custom-designed geometric patterning in the carpet, walls and ceiling surfaces.

©Rockwell Group

One of the goals of the new rail service is to create a seamless travel experience from departure to arrival, beginning with a more convenient and efficient ticketing system. In all of the stations, the ticketing counter is a discrete, minimalist area.

The Miami station, the largest of the terminals, spans the equivalent of three city blocks in Overtown, near downtown Miami. The new building features a stacked concrete and glass façade supported by concrete V- braces. The station will be organized into three distinct zones: a ground floor lobby, a second floor retail area and food hall, and a third floor train platform. (Given the density of the Miami site, the railways will be elevated.)

In the Miami station, the Brightline logo will be subtly backlit on a white Corian desk, with black-on-black signage above. A self-service kiosk with a white, glowing Corian wall framing multifunction LED touch screens will provide information about destinations and will allow travelers to purchase tickets.

©Rockwell Group

Design features will serve as wayfinding cues that direct travelers to the retail areas, food hall and train platforms on the upper levels. Custom modular seating islands and Corian tables in white, grey, slate blue and yellow, and a sculptural information desk made of black and white Corian will embody the concepts of speed and motion. The colors, shapes and positions of these furniture pieces, combined with the grey-on-grey chevron flooring, will create a clear path that leads travelers to distinctive yellow escalators.

Floating digital hoods above the escalators and metal mesh panels in a custom, over-scaled chevron pattern will draw the eye upwards to the platforms. Additionally, escalators and columns on each level will be clad in seamless LED screens that will display digital content, including interactive maps, departure/arrival messages and undulating arrows to guide travelers.