The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) is pleased to announce that the 14th Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design has been awarded to the Grand Paris Express, a large-scale transit project currently being built in and around the Paris metropolitan area. Through carefully articulated design interventions, the Grand Paris Express illustrates the potential for the planning and execution of mobility infrastructure to transform a city and its region.

Established in 1986, the biennial Green Prize recognizes projects that make an exemplary contribution to the public realm of a city, improve the quality of life in that context, and demonstrate a humane and worthwhile direction for the design of urban environments. Eligible projects must include more than one building or open space constructed in the last 10 years.

With 68 new stations and 200 kilometers of additional tracks, as well as extensions of existing metro lines, the Grand Paris Express is currently the largest urban design project in Europe. Its four new lines will circle around the capital and provide connections with Paris’s three airports, developing neighborhoods, business districts, and research clusters. It will service more than 100 municipalities, 165,000 companies, and the daily transport of 2,000,000 commuters.

Construction work began mid-June 2016 and is due to last until 2030. Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes has designed 3 of the new stations of Grand Paris Express. The station Paris Exhibition Center of Line 17 is now under construction.