AREP Covers 1,200 Bikes at Paris Gare du Nord With a 1,700 m² Solar Roof

A 1,700-square-metre bicycle hall at Paris's Gare du Nord now shelters almost 1,200 bicycles under a roof made of photovoltaic glass. Designed by AREP with SNCF Gares & Connexions as lead architect and completed in 2024, the structure generates its own electricity while parking bikes at one of Europe's busiest rail termini.

The architects describe the project as "an experiment in new communal roofs" and "the embodiment of unifying uses, encouraging people to adopt frugal and sober lifestyles, with the rise of cycling, an essential intermodality at metropolitan stations."

How is the hall built?

The structure is deliberately simple. Timber beams rest on a galvanised steel crinoline and cross in an alternating butterfly pattern, receiving rooflights at the ridge. The photovoltaic glass roof provides weather protection and produces what the architects call electrons that "contribute to the renewable design of the rail world and low-carbon mobility."

Natural ventilation conditions the volume. Daylight enters through the moucharabié effect of the solar cells and through skylights glazed with roughly forty re-used glass panes salvaged from the Centre Pompidou's caterpillar — the escalator tube that ran along the building's facade until its dismantling.

The re-used panes are part of a broader material strategy the architects lay out explicitly:

• reducing the impact of resources;
• consciously choosing materials;
• taking a proactive approach to re-use;
• seeking constructive simplicity;
• integrating renewable energies as building materials.

What does the geometry reference?

AREP conceived the hall as "a conversation in time." Its grid echoes the ten-metre structural module of the Gare du Nord designed by architect Jacques-Ignace Hittorff between 1860 and 1865. The light roof also dialogues with the glass canopy of the Transilien hall from 2001, which the architects say it protects in its purity.

The project aligns with the Paris Climate Plan and anticipates the city's forthcoming bioclimatic local urban development plan. According to the architects, it offers a model for the future of the Halles and the urban canopy more broadly, addressing the dual challenge of climate mitigation and adaptation.

Why does it matter?

The hall links cycling with rail at a metropolitan station, increasing interaction between bikes and what the architects call other frugal modes of transport. With nearly 1,200 bicycles housed under a generating canopy, the project tests whether station infrastructure can double as clean-energy hardware. As Paris tightens bioclimatic building rules, the Gare du Nord hall stands as a working prototype for low-carbon intermodal design across the SNCF network.