Grand Paris public spaces’ book

In 2016, the Société du Grand Paris and Île-de-France Mobilités launched the Atelier des Places du Grand Paris, a project to consider the public spaces around the stations of the future Grand Paris Express metro, and entrusted the TVK agency, surrounded by a team of designers, researchers and specialists brought together for the occasion, with the task of defining the design principles. The study will take the form of a public space design guide, Places du Grand Paris, to be published at the end of 2019.

Initially intended for those involved in the Grand Paris Express project, Places du Grand Paris was distributed on a very limited basis, although since its publication it has aroused the interest of a wider public. Although it is based on the situation of Greater Paris, it sets out principles that are more general in scope. Conceived as a treatise on public space, it goes beyond its original purpose and can be used in other contexts. By publishing it today, we hope that it will meet with a wider readership and contribute to the emergence of a common culture around the public space project.

TVK has been involved in thinking about public space for a long time, through its projects and achievements, and believes that public space does not yet play a sufficiently important role in public debate. Yet public space is both an essential catalyst for the problems of our contemporary world and a major lever for renewing our ways of inhabiting the Earth. As a forum for the expression of crises of all kinds, the unpredictability of the world and collective action, public space reflects the way in which we inhabit and transform the skin of the globe. It has the ability to make a space and a society adhere durably to its terrestrial environment. As a fundamental ecological infrastructure, public space holds together the pieces of the world in which we live.

Too often seen through the prism of functional issues and their technical corollaries, it must in fact be conceived as a project for society. Public space is the layer of soil and atmosphere in which we meet and live together, a space constantly renewed by the movements of the world, an environment inhabited by living beings.

Authors
Under the direction of the Société du Grand Paris and Île-de-France Mobilités, a collective reflection led by TVK with TN+, Soline Nivet, Ville Ouverte, Antoine Fleury, Géraldine Texier-Rideau, Étienne Ballan, ON, RR&A, Franck Boutté Consultants, Yes We Camp, Transamo.

Dr. Antoine Fleury is a Junior Researcher in urban geography at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). In his research he aims to highlight how public spaces are produced in big cities with regard to design, management, and control. He analyzes the changing practices of both public institutions and various stakeholders, linking them to the spatial restructuring of cities. His research interest also includes the study of changing retail geographies in cities, focusing on retailers and public policies.
He has published numerous articles in scientific journals, mainly in French. He has also co-edited four books (Espace et rapports de domination, 2015; Le petit commerce dans la ville-monde, 2020; Les espaces publics urbains. Penser, enquêter, fabriquer, 2022; Les espaces publics à l’épreuve des mobilités, 2022), and contributed to the implementation of a design guide for public spaces (Places du Grand Paris, Principes de conception pour les espaces publics du Grand Paris Express, 2019).