Porte de l’Europe，Kirchberg, Luxembourg | Metaform

The project for the mixed-use development Porte de l’Europe takes place along the JFK Avenue, at the west entrance to the prominent business zone Kirchberg in Luxembourg City. The program of the competition included the development of the mixeduse buildings, consisting of a housing tower with 21 floors with around 130 apartments, an office building of around 6.000 m² and another 6.500 m² of retail and service area.

The housing tower, with its facades in white limestone, is situated at the east end of the site, set back behind the two existing administrative towers (Porte de l’Europe). Our idea was to play with the scale: to create modules and stack them on top of each other, by rotation and offset, creating sort of a fan. The green roof of the 1st floor kindergarten rises up to the higher housing floors, only to enrich the terraces with vegetation, and offer pleasant view from the bottom center of the site. The floors of the housing tower are developed by pixelization: the modules rotate and shift, orienting the views from the apartments towards the cite and the city. This movement also allows a great variety when it comes to different apartment configurations and sizes. This ”inside” facade of the housing tower differs in character and form from the ”outside” one. The idea was to respect the existing urban context of the business area, by leaving those outer facades vertical and protective.

The office tower is situated on the other end of the site, by visually creating a formal balance with the housing segment. Proportionally, it is more related to the surrounding administrative buildings. The main structure consists of horizontal slabs, superposed and shifted, thus allowing direct visual communication with the Philharmonie on the other side of the street. This superposition of the floors leaves space for the direct sunlight in the public central open space. The form created this way attracts attention from the Avenue, and invites visitors to stop and explore. The restaurants and cafes that surround the central square and the Avenue animate the public space beyond the working hours.

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