?Reinvent Paris? calls for proposals to develop 34 underground sites throughout the city The city of Paris hopes to see some of its future development happen underground.
?Reinvent Paris 2? is an international competition to develop 34 unused underground sites throughout the city that include tunnels, parking lots, a Renault garage, and subway stations as a way to rediscover the potential of Paris?s ?basements.?
A call for proposals invites partners to imagine projects that are not only architectural, but also economic, cultural, and social that will address major challenges facing urban centers today.
While 16 stops on the Paris Metro system were shut down about 70 years ago, three of them?at Champ de Mars (7th arrondissement), Croix-Rouge (6th), and Saint-Martin (3rd)?will see the light of day once again. There have been talks in the past to transform a few of them into swimming pools, bars, or nightclubs, but they never came to be. Deputy mayor of Paris Jean-Louis Missika hopes that architects and developers will use their imaginations to come up with innovative projects that reinterpret the existing infrastructure.
By bringing natural light and creating a new vertical relationship between the underground city and the open air city, the projects will open up a new dimension of town planning. Tunnels, unused stations, car parks, reservoirs are all infrastructures that deserve a second life. Changes in mobility and public space require a focus on all these spaces ...