The intention of the cross-disciplinary event was twofold:

1. to enhance French-Dutch collaborations by matchmaking, exchange of visions and methods from academia, institutions and architects;

2. to identify prospects for setting up a new joint research agenda or to identify other opportunities for follow up initiatives.

The seminar ‘Stations of the Future’ took place on the 15th and 16th of March 2018 and was organized as collaboration between AMS Institute (Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions), La Fabrique de la Cité, the Embassy of the Netherlands in Paris including the Atelier Néerlandais and the Delft University of Technology.

The contributions focused on the stations in the future and examined their new role as hub of exchange from cross-country experiences in France and the Netherlands.

The idea behind this event was based on the mega project Le Grand Paris that has the ambition to create several economic centers around the metropolitan area of Paris that are interconnected with a new network of public transport as well as with airports and high speed train services. A project of 200 km new to build railways and 68 new stations.

Together with the Randstad networks in the Netherlands, the seminar focused on a debate on several case studies in both metropolitan areas to understand the role of station hubs in these areas.

 

A selected group of professionals,, stakeholders, experts, designers, architects and scientists from both France and the Netherlands were invited to share knowledge and experience in sessions on three topics:

1. stations as a intermodal node

2. stations as a destination

3. stations as a data center

On the first day a small group of academics had a session of peer-to-peer French-Dutch learning in order to explore potential collaboration. Three plenary presentations by Roberto Cavallo, TU Delft, University of Technology, Nacima Baron, Université Paris Est, and Tom Kuipers, AMS Valorisation led to an interesting debate.

In the evening the two years of the successful partnership of AMS Institute and la Fabrique de la Cité was celebrated as well as a new MoU for the coming two years was signed between the two parties. But before that, two impressive plenary sessions took place by Catherine Barbé of the Société du Grand Paris and Daan Zandbelt of  the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.

On Friday very interesting views from botch French and Dutch sides were exchanged:

Julien Peyron and Gaelle Pinson, Société du Grand Paris: ‘Station: intermodal pole and datacenter’
Pauline Marchetti, Sensual City Studio and Jacques Ferrier: ‘Gare Sensuelle’
Marten Wassmann, Benthem Crouwel Architects: ‘Transit facilities: epicenters of contemporary urban life’

Miguel Loos, Bureau Spoorbouwmeester: ‘Recent and future Dutch station projects’
Arjan Dingsté, UNStudio: ‘Arnhem central: Spaces of Flow’
Kees Kaan, KAAN Architecten: ‘Schiphol: multimodal hub’
Jacques Pajot, Atelier Novembre: ‘Gares du Bourget Aéroport et triangle de Gonesse’

In the afternoon 3 workshops took place:

Workshop 1 Station as Intermodal Node
Moderator: Niels van Oort
Niels van Oort (TU Delft)
Yo Kaminagai (RATP)
Discussions on “Station as Intermodal node”

Workshop 2 Station as Destination
Moderator: Ton Venhoeven
Ton Venhoeven
Sebastiaan de Wilde (NS Station)
Ute Schneider (KCAP, Train and the City)

Workshop 3 Station as Data Center
Moderator: Winnie Daamen
Winnie Daamen (TU Delft)
Jeroen van der Heuvel (NS Station)

Closing session
Moderator: Stephan van Dijk, AMS Institute