From infrastructure to public spaces; How train stations and their design rationales reflect the evolutions of European societies, from the XIXth century to today.

The status of train stations in the city has already been the subject of a large number of investigations; let them be literary, artistic or scientific. Can we name a better sign of urbanity than this architectural object combining mobility and centrality? Train stations are a constant element of European cities. They are a link between scales, interconnecting far and close, they are places where things meet. They are the heart of cities inter-modality systems but they also connect cities to a national and international scale. Across there more than one century of existence, they have been confronted to great challenges but also many opportunities that shown in their design. Train stations, as spaces with specific purposes, are not just a sum of devices, nor a sum of wishes from users wanting to take the train. They worked out over time with continuous approximations, learning by doing, and especially by the increasingly fine coordination between behaviours, functions, places and objects that train stations brings together and that make them such special city elements. Architecture and urban planning have the opportunity to perform by perfecting and setting urban patterns, in order to eventually give users the chance to understand and influence their environment. This is even truer for train stations as catalyzers of city characteristics. Given the meaning of the stations at various scale, from the building itself to larger urban systems, we are trying here to understand what drove these projects from the XIXth century to today, in order to hopefully identify some design features that would improve their flexibility and the users experiences in the future. To achieve that, we organize this thesis around answering these questions: How did train stations translate the evolution of European societies from the XIXth century to today in the way they were designed? Does the station design have an impact on the users experience, both about the travel but also about the city? If so, how to define design rationales to make that space functional and create opportunities for social interactions? In order to achieve that goal, we organized this thesis in two parts, following their own methods. These develop from each other to eventually lead to common results in conclusion. Our entire argumentation is based on three case studies, to which we apply each of our assomptions in order to confirm or refute them. We decided to analyze 3 cases of European train stations that we know well, that were built first in the XIXth century and went or are going through a renovation process. They are Gare Saint-Roch in Montpellier - France, Norreport Station in Copenhagen - Denmark and Gare du Nord in Paris - France.