2013 Mattèo FranssensMattèo Franssens - The university in the city center
"After the years '60, the University of Liege decided to develop new faculties in the forest domain of the Sart-Tilman located in the periphery of the city, following the example of development of the industrial zonings and the residential areas. With the change of the lifestyles and urban philosophy in the years '90, the university returns to the lifestyle of urban environment student habitat, consequently limiting expensive mobility.

Recently, the university has bought back , in the heart of the city of Liege for developing new an old cinema in the heart of the city of Liege in order to develop new audiences to with it. Adjacent to that , the town of Liege develops a policy of requalification of certain districts disinherited of the downtown area in difficulties.

The project imagined here suggests the shared interest that city and university would find to set up equipment profiting as well as the student- and urban population.


Being established in full historical fabric by recovering a structure of multistory parking lot, the project is conceived like a building-small island integrated in its district; exploiting the repetitive and constraining structure of the old purely functionalist building, the space principle magnifies this Cartesian grid, by limiting the transformation at least.

The unit is organized on the main idea of the advance of the students, articulating a continuum of spaces of meeting, work and services for those, in the middle which some dominant functions form large space cavities (gym, swimming pool, audiences, hanging garden in roof…)

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