Leading French architects have attacked the planned glass renovation of the Gare du Nord rail station in Paris, warning that the project to create a vast shopping space is “unacceptable”, “indecent” and a “serious offence to transport users”, reports The Guardian.
The award-winning French architect Jean Nouvel as well as historians and town planners wrote an open letter to Le Monde saying the €600m (£540m) renovation plan to create a glass structure – with tens of thousands of square metres of shops, walkways, split-levels and 105 escalators – was a “serious urban error” that would deform the historic building, fail Parisians and befuddle travellers.
The station in the north of Paris is Europe’s biggest rail hub, with 700,000 passengers a day – including those arriving from London on the Eurostar and 500,000 local passengers who use trains connecting the Paris suburbs.
For years, the 19th-century building has suffered from unflattering comparisons with the gleaming St Pancras in London where Eurostar passengers alight in the UK. Andy Street, the former head of John Lewis who is mayor of the West Midlands, even had to apologise to France in 2014 after calling the Gare du Nord “the squalor pit of Europe” compared with what he called the “modern, forward-looking” St Pancras.