Two Visions, Same Brief
In 1902, a private company was awarded the concession for three subway lines in Paris. Its mission was the same as that of the Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris (CMP).
However, there was one notable difference: while the CMP built tunnels, the Nord-Sud designed spaces. It made this, its founding principle.
The Aesthetic
Wider, ornate arches; walls perpendicular to the platforms; curved corridors with no right angles. On the tunnel tympanum, the direction of the trains is indicated by ceramic tiles—not on a metal plaque set into the wall like the CMP. The name of each station is written in white on a blue background. The vault is adorned with decorative ceramic tiles that run from one platform to the other. At Saint-Lazare, architect Lucien Bechmann designed a rotunda that became one of the most considered spaces on the network.
Its subway stations become spaces in their own right.
The Legacy
The Nord-Sud disappeared in 1931, absorbed by the CMP. But Paris has not erased it, and its legacy remains. In the stations of today’s Lines 12 and 13, the wavy ceramic friezes still run along the corridors. The NS monogram winds its way around the advertising frames. The frieze changes color depending on the type of station: honey brown for single-line stations, green for transfer stations.
At Abbesses, 36 metres underground, the elliptical staircase counts exactly 176 steps — and turns exactly as it was built in 1910.
1902
The 1902 is named after the year the Nord-Sud was founded. Not as a historical reference — as a position. Its leather piping is hand-stitched along every edge. Its eyelet carries the 176 logo recessed into a form that echoes the elliptical geometry of that staircase — two textures meeting at one precise edge.
The Nord-Sud lost the battle for Paris in 1931. Its philosophy is still alive.
