The Grand Paris Express underground transport project is reconfiguring spaces in the Paris region. With 68 new stations designed by architects, these infrastructures are no longer mere transit points, but spatial and social interfaces between surface and the underground. This paper offers a multi-scalar reading of these spaces, both spatially (verticality and in-depth) and temporally (from conception to use), for three stations: Villejuif-Gustave Roussy, Clichy-Montfermeil and Noisy-Champs. The documents produced by architects (plans, sections, perspectives, models) are not only tools of representation but are also ideal projections of a desired future (Choay, 1965). As a moment of imagination, these spatial productions articulate time: past, present and future. These documents will be compared with a series of sensitive sketches carried out in and around the stations, to cross-reference the projected intention with situated perception. Documenting the actual uses, functional constraints or social conflicts that run through these places, allows the formulation of a critical look at the projects ‘visions. Drawing on the concept of the critical zone1 (Latour, Weibel, 2020), this work examines these stations as interstitial public places between surface and subsoil, where tensions between technical infrastructures, social life and environment materialize. Through a visual and comparative analysis, the aim of this study is to shift the way we look at these infrastructures, considering them as stratified environment where forms of urban, material and symbolic cohabitation are negotiated and renewed daily.
- As a philosophical concept, the critical zone refers to the thin inhabited layer of the earth, where human activities and flows between living and non-living are concentrated. ↩︎
Bibliography
- Choay, F. (2014). L’urbanisme, utopies et réalités: Une anthologie (3rd. ed. 464 p.). Paris: Point Essais.
- Latour, B.,Weibel, P. (Éds.). (2020). Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth (560 p.). MIT Press.
- Rouillard, D., et al. (2012). L’infraville : Futurs des infrastructures (270 p.). Archibooks.
