The UK’s largest planning and design consultancy, Barton Willmore, has been appointed to advise a French government agency on planning a new Paris orbital railway.
The project, run by Société du Grand Paris (SGP), features 58 new stations and more than 100 miles of railway track in a loop around the French capital in a bid to boost the economy by linking some of the most remote parts of the city.
Barton Willmore is leading the creation of a design code to guide the architecture of the project’s five maintenance sites, which are ‘located in very different parts of the city’.
The consultancy is challenged with helping to ensure the new sites are in keeping with their local surroundings, which range from agricultural land to heavily populated urban areas, while still keeping a consistent identity.
The project will run for six months and once the design code is complete the practice ‘could go on to advise SGP on selecting architects to design the maintenance sites and ensuring their work complies with the code both in design and construction’.
Amazing – the French actually employing a British company on the planning of a big rail project! If we are not careful, they’ll be giving a construction contract to a UK civil engineering firm.
Smart. Next step is get rid of the cars. All of them.