Villejuif Gustave Roussy Station / Dominique Perrault Architecture

The Villejuif-Gustave Roussy Station aims to erase the threshold between the open public space and the closed space of the station by blurring the limits of the city. Its helicoidal architecture on the surface exerts a centripetal force on the urban fabric which draws it towards the space that has been completed underground. The large concrete cylinder with its molded wall, flooded with light, is traversed, and enlivened by footbridges and escalators. Here, the sky of this inverted skyscraper is simply the ground level of the city. Natural light pours all the way down to the platforms located some fifty meters below. The sky is above the railways. This exposed infrastructure is given maximum visibility and incorporates the logic of construction. The architectural layout is part of the urban cityscape. By erasing in the ground and prolonging uses and views between the surface and the subterranean domain, it unifies the vertical dynamics of access to the transport network. The architectural treatment transfigures this infrastructure now become architecture. Without walls or façade, the architecture of this station sunken into the ground is not in opposition to the city or anything else. It frees the horizon and disappears from the urban silhouette, swallowing up with it then bit of sky. - Dominique Perrault, 2024