Administration and laboratory building

The building is in close proximity to two blast furnaces under historic preservation in the extensive brown-field land of Esch-Belval. An area being re-developed as a new neighbourhood and university campus. Through its height and location right across from the blast furnaces, the building takes an important role in the urban development of the area. Luxembourg’s first clinker-brick clad high-rise building stands embedded in the region’s still-present industrial past, alongside chimneys and industrial sheds of clinker brick, and is rooted in the iron-rich earth. The structure of the building consists of a three-story high base from which a tower rises. The shape and height of the base geometrically integrates well with the existing buildings and their context. The tower becomes increasingly light as it rises. With each storey, layer by layer of brick facade cedes its place to aluminium cladding. Finally, only the vertical elements remain in brick, reaching skywards. Along with the neighbouring buildings, already existing plane trees were assimilated into the project to create an open and public square in front of the main entrance. The central core on the ground floor is covered in polished steel, suggesting a mirroring water-surface, referring to the user – the Water and the Environmental Agency. The polished steel surface also reflects the outside world and turns the entry hall into a public space. Above ground floor, are three floors of laboratories and technicians’ rooms and twelve storeys of office space.