La Petite Ceinture (the “Little Belt”), a 32-kilometer railway encircling Paris, sits disused and mostly abandoned. It cuts through the Parc de Buttes Chaumont, where it rests in a trench visible from the park but off-limits to the public. This proposal removes the railway and repurposes the trench as a formal garden with a number of hydraulic elements. The adjacent undercroft, a noteworthy artifact of Paris’ industrial heritage, is adapted into a public bathhouse, making use of the geothermal aquifer beneath the site to bring the ritual of bathing into the park’s culture of leisure.
This project was designed in collaboration with Carolyn Muldowney.
The trench is defined by the flat ground in the center. The topography around it slopes to meet the site. The primary purpose of this intervention is to integrate it, so that it becomes the most interesting part of the park, melding the industrial history of the Petite Ceinture with the unique landscape that surrounds it. To accomplish this end, the addition of three concrete stairways and a ramp make the trench accessible via the existing paths of the park.
Invoking the legacy of the site, an artificial waterway calls out the path of the former railway. While this waterway respects the rigidity of the infrastructure, the paths introduced by the intervention are in the spirit of the park and juxtapose this rigidity, with a more organic and meandering nature. On weekends with warm weather, the whole park becomes very cheerful and crowded, and opening this part of the park up and creating an accessible path to it from the bar on the hill above would be of huge value to the park by enhancing the culture of leisure that it already has.
The steepness of the cut of the trench becomes more and more pronounced moving from south to north, from the more park-related end to the more city-related end of the trench. A series of small gardens invoke different sensory experiences and were inspired by other parks around Paris. In addition to these gardens, visitors experience water at different levels as they explore the trench: the narrow channel following the tracks becomes a large reservoir at the north end, which acts as a reflecting pool while storing rainwater to be used throughout the intervention.
At its North end, a cavernous undercroft space is found, where the railway formerly bifurcated to extend a spur to La Villette, This generous space offers the opportunity to invite a new program,
The proposal encloses the undercroft and adjacent bridge, creating a bathhouse where the water collected by the trench becomes occupiable, and visitors mingle with plants in a controlled interior garden. A series of enclosed pools offer a circuit typical of a public baths, with pools of varying temperatures. The infrastructure to support this program is installed in the tunnel extending to the North of the undercroft.
The most beautiful qualities of the existing undercroft are the ceiling of brick vaults and the wonky grid of monumental columns. The internal partitions, which do not reach the ceiling in order to leave it and the column capitals fully visible, meander around the inside of this space, always respecting the columns and affording them unique spatial positions within each bathing area. The greenhouse plantings separate the primary bathing circuit from a leisure pool. While integrated into the experience of the space, is a less formal, more open area for relaxing among the plants and for recreational swimming.