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The genesis of the solar bike shed goes back to 2021, when the Horizon 2024 project was launched: in application of the LOM (loi d'orientation des mobilités), we had to provide 853 bicycle parking spaces at Paris North Station. A long-term solution was obvious: parking a thousand bikes would require the construction of a new “building”, rather than the use of street furniture. Logically, we opted for a shed, which perfectly suited to the requirements of the Architecte des Bâtiments de France in this heritage context. The development project consisted in intelligently optimizing the square meters, part of which were previously used by the SNCF as a backstage area.
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A second access point for bicycles has been created on the slab, in anticipation of the future bicycle-bus lane on rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. As an extension of this wider opening, a forecourt has been created, from which it is now possible to access the station directly via vertical walkways. From the Transilien station concourse, it was important to ensure that access to the upper forecourt was easy to see. Hence the new walkway, which takes you directly up to the upper forecourt, before reaching the bike shed which is visible at every stage of the journey.
Today, the building houses almost 1,200 bicycles and their users. The roof, which provides protection from the elements, is made of photovoltaic glazing. In this way, the shed produces electrons that contribute to the renewal of the railway world and low carbon mobilities. The volume is naturally ventilated; the space is illuminated by the moucharaby of the solar cells and by the skylights, composed of some forty re-used glazing from the Centre Pompidou. In this way, the shed promotes the use of bicycles in the city and increases the interaction of cycling with other frugal modes of transport.
Conceived as a 1,700 sqm light roof, the Paris North bycicle shed was imagined as a conversation through time. Its geometry follows a historical thread, echoing the chord of the place, the decametric grid of Paris North Station, designed by the architect Jacques-Ignace Hittorff between 1860 and 1865, and dialoguing with the glass roof of the Transilien hall, dating from 2001, while protecting its purity. The bicycle shed we designed is an open shelter measuring 70 meters long by 24 meters wide, protected by a by a two-slope solar roof and an openwork wooden screen facade. The architecture is simple: a metal frame, wooden beams and photovoltaic panels. Representative of the issues of our time the way we approach construction, this shed embodies new approaches to ecological lightness – reduction of resource impact, conscious choice of materials, proactive reuse, constructive simplicity – integrating renewable energies as building materials, in line with the EMC2B approach (energy, materials, carbon, climate, biodiversity) that guides AREP's architectural design. The wooden claustra, a light ribbon that encircles the shed, is made up of vertical battens laid tightly and rapidly on a galvanised steel structure. At the top, the wooden uprights bear small lacquered steel hats in colours ranging from blue to red, sky blue and pink, to retranscribe the climatic history of Paris from 1850 to 2024 in the manner of warming stripes, which show how the climate is changing.
From the outset and throughout the project, the client, architect and project management team worked in close collaboration. After an iterative process, the construction of a shelter emerged as the best long-term solution for bicycle parking.
AREP is a multidisciplinary practice (architecture, Urban Studies and Regional Planning, Design, Engineering, Consulting & Programming, Project Management Assistance) which brings together the specialities and areas of expertise essential to provide practical solutions, through its EMC2B approach, to the ecological emergency. Present both in France and abroad, with more than 1,000 people of 40 different nationalities, AREP contributes to research, public dialogue and shifting practices through its publications. We are taking action to advance the ecological transition. The EMC2B approach is the prism through which AREP analyzes his projects. It allows to measure the answers brought by our projects to the Energy - Material issues - Carbon - Climate and Biodiversity.
