Belval

Belval Spring, Belval Park, Belval Square: two gardens and a square

This project is essentially about transforming an inhospitable space into a public space. The space is central to a completely new urban development and consists of characterful and rugged industrial heritage. This new city is part of the western masterplan area in Esch-Belval, a district in the town of Esch-sur-Alzette in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

NU proposes public space as a new heart for urban development: a place that both restores the local relationship with the soil and connects with the area’s industrial foundations. Various intimate recesses are situated in the historical concrete cooling basins, resulting in a complex layered space which recharges the city.

Generous stairs and shallow ramps connect the different levels and create a continuous landscape full of contrasts. Cultural, commercial and social support programmes are housed in and around this intense space, connected by the lowered landscape. At ground level, the connection to the surrounding urban fabric is organised by the introduction of a large-scale circular steel disc.

• client Agora, s.a.r.l. & Cie
• location Esch-sur-Alzette (LU)
• date 2018
• status competition proposal (second place)
• icw Studio SNCDA (architecture)
• engineering office Bollinger Grohmann, Betic
• team NU Nathan Heindrichs