The Euravenir Tower project occupies the last free parcel of Phase One of the Euralille Area, which began in 1998 with OMA's project built in association with François Delhays.
Is it possible to reassert a city through an architectural project? This bold question was the starting point for the project's layout. The parcel's strategic position, located at the intersection of different axes, pushed LAN's research towards a sophisticated solution that acts as a hub, as a stitch that brings together the elements gravitating around it. LAN strove for a "multiform" architecture whose geometry could provide a specific response to the various challenges tied to the project's scale, geography, and program.
By extending and crossing the axes within the parcel, the initial extrusion was carved to obtain a kind of small tower. By completing the Avenue Le Corbusier, this vertical element is also a corner building on the Place Valladolid and it signals the city to drivers coming up from the beltway below. This architecture has created a new urban space that combines private and public, vertical and horizontal.
The base of the project provides inhabitants and office workers a public space that fosters social interaction; it functions on a human scale. This office project has a very flexible program; form dictates use, and not vice-versa. Each level is organized around a central core that holds all the servant spaces.
In order to complete this process of interrelation, the facades were designed to become a series of windows that provide a 360-degree panorama of the city, framing views of the city's newer parts, its green spaces, and the downtown.
A lattice motif formed by the bands and the trumeaus cuts out the facades. The latter are characterized by different designs in response to their orientation, their usage, and their thermal requirements. The copper is used as a kind of fixed siding along the opaque or semi-glassed stretches of the façade. It is also present in the form of perforated panels that helps precisely regulate the amount of light penetrating the building.
Photos: Julien Lanoo