architect: Seura
location: Paris
A general metropolitan plan for the area already exists; it is a matter of the junction connecting the RER (rapid underground of Paris) and the ordinary underground. And this is the significance of the plan of the large “Square”, a “roof on a garden” from 2004, also called “Canopea” (P. Berger and J. Anziutti firm), which revolutionizes the underground site by connecting it to the park. This is what the project, which aims to re-establish urban continuity for pedestrians from the Beaubourg to the Louvre and from the large alleys to the Seine, reveals. The site will be reorganized, creating a synergy between the Trade Exchange and the renovated Forum. New relationships will be created between the RER junction, the commercial forum and the park. Les Halles will become a greater public area, and form part of a sequence of great Parisian sites: les Tuileries, la Cour Carrée, the Royal Palace, the Beaubourg and the Place des Vosges. The design of a new park will be launched without delay, and the system of the urban underground junction will be modified. The Place Marguerite de Navarre, today a true obstacle race, will be radically modernized; a part of the street trajectory will be eliminated or moved. An important entrance to the RER network, or the line 4, will thus be created.
client: SEM Paris Centre
architects: Seura architectes urbanistes
landscape: Philippe Raguin,
lighting: Light Cibles
commercial program: Bérénice,
circulation: ETC (Philippe Massé)
enginnering: Séchaud et Bossuyt
Since 1998 the Seura firm has designed numerous buildings and urbanistic projects, comprising the reconstruction of the RER station of Denfert-Rochereau in Paris, the upgrading of the Buisses square in Lille, the Corso Chapeau-Rouge in Bordeaux and, with Jacqueline Osty, the reorganization of the embankment of Boulevard Richard-Lenoir in Paris. The Seura firm is moreover working on the reconstruction of the A7 motorway to Marseilles, an eco-district measuring 200 hectares in Douai, and is about to inaugurate a hotel and dwellings in Paris, in rue Crozatier, and the Brulon gallery, for which it won the Grand Prix SIMI prize in 2008. In Cambodia Seura has recently completed the town plan for the new city of Sihanoukville. David Mangin currently teaches at the architecture De la Ville et des Territoires de Marne-la-Vallée, and at the l’École nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. He is the author of numerous articles and critical essays.
