Above the Tracks: Reactivating Gare de Sébeillon as Urban Platform for Culture, Work, and Living
Suspended above the tracks, the gare de Sébeillon in Lausanne–formerly a goods station–is an architectural machine, witness of an era. Its monumental interior, once pulsing with the rhythm of logistics, is now fragmented and dispersed. It no longer reflects its original strength, yet it still harbours latent potential. The project acts as a revivalist gesture—not through nostalgia, but through transformation. The hall regains its monumental presence as a space for exhibitions, events and an urban market, potentially taking over the role that the Riponne square held for decades, whose planned redevelopment may prevent this function. The warehouse section is being converted for everyday use: restaurants and services will occupy the ground floor, with offices above, addressing the needs of a growing, diverse community. A new architectural layer settles on the existing structure: a building that cooperates with the old grid, reinforcing it and creating a new load-bearing system for the addition of offices and residential floors. This responds to local demands and the district’s new urban plan. This project embodies the coexistence of layers: history and the future; the existing and the added; the preserved and the transformed. Instead of erasing, it overwrites. Instead of demolishing, it strengthens. Sébeillon once again becomes an active entity: an urban platform where architecture shapes space and creates a stage for life.
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