1010 Architecture Urbanism

A territorial view: a series of interlinked hubs. The density of public transport stops along the perimeter and the superposition of rail lines (RER and metro) fuels the dream of a diverse and intense urban life. In the end, this dream took the form of an enlarged pentagon from the 2009 metro loop, connecting the central districts on either side of the canal. Today, no urbanity seems to emanate from this hyper-connectivity or hyper-accessibility (ref. definitional study of West Station), so urbanity is understood as a coherent experience of urban space, certainly utilitarian but also complex. People turn to these places because they are looking for specific services, not because they find them in passing. The fate of the perimeter is at a critical juncture. Numerous initiatives, led by public and private actors, will change it for good in the years to come. What is the potential of these stations, not only as functional places, but as places of centrality and urban intensity? What might be the overall impact on the public realm, on how to articulate existing and future facilities in a coherent system? We would like to address this urban transformation through the notion of HUB, which unlike the hub is not only an intermodal exchange point but also a focal point, a node in the network as well as a place, in short a pivot between local and regional dynamics.