One of the leading architects Kengo Kuma and his architecture practice were announced little over five years ago as winners of the new Saint-Denis Pleyel train station in France, the project is crated as the new centre of Paris’ latest expansion. This month an astonishing installation project in collaboration with Stromae and Luc Junior TAM was revealed.
The massive tree trunk is to symbolise the significance of Paris’ important new intersection. The natural light was a pivotal key point of Kuma’s project, the architect and the team have allowed the daylight to reach up to 28 meters into the lower levels of the train station. The late addition by Stromae and Luc Junior TAM rounds up the train and metro station as a true landmark point of this already significant project.
You are likely familiar with Stromae thanks to his dance and hip hop music music while, Luc Junior TAM is his younger brother. Together they are the founders of Mosaert Label, an agency involved in the fashion industry, video, music and stage design production. Luc Junior Tam is the agency’s artistic director.
Kengo Kuma’s winning proposal is taking a scope of over 45,000 square meters and is to feature a business centre, multimedia library as well as retail. The station is imagined as an opportunity for the site of Saint-Denis Pleyel to serve as a stepping stone boosting this metropolitan area’s massive expansion. Kengo Kuma architects shared:
The project is designed as a unique opportunity to open up the district by connecting the two sides of the city over a huge railway network of the Parisian North station. The station becomes an extension of the public spaces on many levels. Multiple levels continue in spiral, so the station functions as a complex that brings in streets in vertical layer. Steel frames that evoke rail tracks are used in the curtain wall and many other parts of the structure, to emphasise the passage of time and history. This approach will make people be aware that the station is theirs and give them pleasant passing-by every day, connected with the network of the city.
The tree installation is placed within the central well of the train station, the tree trunk is designed with a 9 metre height in mind and width of around 5 meters in volume. This is going hand in hand with Kengo Kuma’s emphasis on lowering the stress of daily commute by allowing foot traffic to flow through open as well as interactive spaces. The station itself is imagine as a novel centre of the city by adjoining the daily commute to a cultural dimension within the district of Pleyel. The Kengo Kuma architecture portfolio’s strong point is the integration of cultural into their design. Some of their notable projects are Sydney Civic and Creative Centre as well as the new Singapore Memorial.
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