HOUSING EUROPEA, CERTIFICATES SUBMITTED
EUROPEA, designed by lead architect Jean-Paul Viguier with Art&Built, for clients Unibail-Rodamco-Besix-CFE, is a multi-functional project on Brussels' plateau du Heysel north of town. architectesassoc has been invited to join a team of seven architects working on the residential part, designing a 5.600sqm unit.This is in fact a new neighbourhood destined to offer 220.000sqm of commercial and recreational space and 66.000sqm of housing. J-P Viguier has organised housing on a sloped park joining the lower-lying and more urban Josephine Charlotte quartier to the green and leafy plateau above. Retail slides underneath this landscaped promenade, where wide skylit pedestrian "streets" are positioned, leading to a central public plaza. Efforts so far have concentrated on what worries us most connection : between street-level public space in need of informal social control and the generous double-height entrance proposed, between the housing itself and the planted "hill", and finally between the oblique volumes imposed and the city skyline. Certificates were introduced January 2018, public inquiry planned shortly afterwards, results awaited.