Asides

Fantôme de Croix Rouge
January 2010

Team: Alejandro Fernandez, John Lee, Rob Micacchi

The Fantôme de Croix Rouge (Phantom of Croix Rouge) reconciles the history of the Place Michel Debré in Paris, otherwise known as the Carrefour Croix Rouge, with present and future conditions. The Fantôme project acts as a backdrop to Le Centaure de César (César’s Centaur), a controversial installation to the site by acclaimed Spanish sculptor César Baldiccini in 1985. Despite the presence of this spectacular statue, however, the site is rather unremarkable. The Centaur is situated at the head of a narrow peninsula, most of which is either used for motorbike parking or dominated by a large ventilation grille. Pedestrian usage is limited to a narrow strip adjacent to a shop at the foot of the peninsula.
Therefore, the Fantôme celebrates the past of Croix Rouge while providing a pleasant backdrop for the statue at a busy
Parisian intersection. Sectional steel doors, their panels perforated with the tile pattern of the hidden Métro station, slide up from below grade to create a ‘phantom’ station at grade. In a nod to the controversy surrounding the statue, a
metal frame—representing the train tunnel—conceals a folding partition that can be deployed to cover the ‘offending parts’ of the statue. Finally, to make the space more pleasant, composite metal panels are used in the space of the
existing ventilation grille to act as a sound barrier between the trains below and the new intervention above.