Grau

Click to see the film © Jeudi Wang

Competition for the redevelopment project of the surroundings of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris – 1rst Prize

Paris is a city with clear rules. On one hand, there is the visible world – the monuments and perspectives building it– and on the other, the invisible – made off serving spaces. Both worlds work together and if Paris is so beautiful today it is because this hierarchy exists.

The Passage Notre-Dame, as a service program, belongs to the world of the invisible.
The entire program is in the former car park, built in 1970 by the architects Hermant and Jouve, with large concrete piles and a roof that supports the garden above it. By demolishing the intermediate slab and remodeling the pillars, a large central space, 4 meters high and 60 meters long, is freed, punctuated by U-shaped beams and large glass facades housing the program along each side of the passage.
The passage is a continuous and fluid interior promenade, a, extension of the city. It articulates different places and times: the crypt, the Seine, the cathedral.
The proposal is rational in the way it is inscribed in the existing structure, but also romantic in the different experiences it offers visitors. Walking up the eastern staircase and raising your eyes to the cathedral throws you back 800 years, when Notre-Dame was only to be seen through an ascending perspective. All the effort of the project lies in these articulations and in the connection between the visible world above and the invisible world below, between what we see and what we show.

Team : Bureau Bas Smets – GRAU Architectes Urbanistes – Neufville-Gayet Architectes – Ingérop – Franck Boutté Consultants Les Éclaireurs – BLD Waterdesign – Cronos Conseils
Client : Ville de Paris
Interior perspective: © Jeudi Wang