Kengo Kuma and Associates has won an international competition to design the new Saint-Denis Pleyel train station in France. Like Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue and Elizabeth de Portzamparc, Kengo Kuma will design one of four stations that will be built as part of the ambitious Grand Paris Express (GPE) project which seeks to modernize the existing transport network and create an automatic metro that will connect new neighborhoods to Paris.
The winning project aims to serve as a multi-level extension of public space that will connect two districts currently separated by the large railway network of the Parisian North station.
Read on to learn more about Kengo Kuma’s winning proposal.
“Multiple levels continue in spiral, so the station functions as a complex that brings in streets in vertical layer,” describes Kengo Kuma. “Steel frames that evoke rail tracks are used in the curtain wall and many other parts of the structure, to emphasize the passage of time and history. This approach will make people be aware that the station is theirs and give them pleasant passing-by every day, connected with the network of the city.”
The “Saint-Denis Pleyel Emblematic Train Station” hopes to become a “multi-sensory” sequence of spaces that will “bring about a dynamic social and cultural dimension to the district of Pleyel.” A business center, retail space and multimedia library will be integrated into the 45,000-square-meter station.
