Solar bicycle hall, Gare Paris-Nord

The solar-powered bicycle hall is an experiment in new communal roofs. It is the embodiment of unifying uses, encouraging people to adopt frugal and sober lifestyles, with the rise of cycling, an essential intermodality at metropolitan stations. A large-scale sunshade, at a time when France is at +4°C and Paris at 50°C, it is also, like others presented in this book, a common feature of climatic well-being, a metropolitan sombrero.

Representative of today’s challenges in terms of how we approach construction, it embodies new approaches to ecological lightness – reducing the impact of resources, consciously choosing materials, taking a proactive approach to re-use, seeking constructive simplicity – by integrating renewable energies as building materials. In line with the Paris Climate Plan and in anticipation of its bioclimatic local urban development plan, it thus provides a response to the future of the Halles and, more generally, the urban canopy, in the face of the dual challenge of mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Designed as a 1700 m² light roof, the Gare du Nord bicycle hall was conceived as a conversation in time. Its geometry follows a historical thread, echoing the chord of the place, the ten-metre grid of the Gare du Nord designed by the architect Jacques-Ignace Hittorff between 1860 and 1865, and dialoguing with the glass roof of the Transilien hall dating from 2001, while protecting its purity.

This bicycle station is a simple geometry: wooden beams resting on a galvanised steel crinoline. They cross each other in an alternating butterfly pattern to receive rooflights at the ridge. The roof, which provides protection from the elements, is made of photovoltaic glass. In this way, the hall produces electrons that contribute to the renewable design of the rail world and low-carbon mobility. The volume is naturally ventilated, and the space is lit by the moucharabié of the solar cells and the skylights, made up of some forty re-used panes of glass from the Centre Pompidou caterpillar.

The building now houses almost 1,200 bicycles and their users. In this way, the hall promotes the use of bicycles in the city and increases the interaction between cycling and other frugal modes of transport.

AREP mission: Project management assistance
Architect: SNCF Gares & Connexions