This project is part of a common master plan that requisitions the relationship between the University of Liège and the City. For 150 years it has grown haphazardly without long-term strategy. To respond to its extension, our intention is to combine the departments of social sciences in the center, where new public facilities and transportation are being developed. In the perspective of 2050, tree departments have been projected to be remove in the center including the Faculty of Architecture, which is actually split in three different areas in Liège.
Why build outside the cities while areas/buildings fall into pending occupation in the center? An investigative work took an interest on forgotten spaces whilst putting into value a zone perceived as urban wasteland. Our main proposal aims to rehabilitate these buildings to (re)generate a dynamic area through the university’s impulsion.
This project is based on this wide reflection. It aims to rehabilitate the ‘Innovation building’ designed by Jean Poskin- Henri Bonhomme in the 1970s, which can be considered as a testimony and evidence of the functionalism period. It used to be a landmark but is at the moment unused. This urban situation combines obvious practical and symbolic interests to the Faculty of Architecture. The idea is to exploit the unique characteristics of the original building: its location in the downtown, its flexible floor plans and the rhythm of the facades.
Moreover, the act of rehabilitation has opened questions about the current requirements of thermal insulation and daylight. The interior disposition consists of several thermal bubbles in the programmatic nested one inside the other. This principle of thermal decomposition becomes the principle of architectural composition.
Although this project is case based on a specific site and program, it questions the preservation and renovation of local heritage by satisfying the actual building standards.