Euralille is an urban quarter in the centre of
Lille, France. Conceived as a major European business district in the 1980s, it is strategically located at the intersection of the
high-speed rail
High-speed rail (HSR) is a type of rail system that runs significantly faster than traditional rail, using an integrated system of specialised rolling stock and dedicated tracks. While there is no single standard that applies worldwide, lines ...
way lines linking
Paris,
Brussels, and
London, and incorporates the
Gare de Lille Europe
Lille-Europe station (French: ''Gare de Lille-Europe'') is a SNCF railway station in Lille, France, on the LGV Nord high-speed railway. The station is primarily used for international Eurostar and long-distance SNCF TGV services, although som ...
and
Gare de Lille Flandres railway stations. The master plan was commissioned in 1988 to the
Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) led by
Rem Koolhaas
Remment Lucas Koolhaas (; born 17 November 1944) is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He is often cited as a re ...
.
[ Netherlands Architecture Institute]
"Euralille and the Grand Palais"
retrieved 27 April 2013
Masterplan
The masterplan comprised an area of 120 hectares, and proposed a program of 800,000 square metres of floor area for various urban activities, including shopping, offices, hotels and housing, a concert hall and a congress centre. The planned functional mix has been subject to change and in 2006 comprised 40% office, 20% residential and 40% amenities space.
The masterplan defined several distinct areas: a mixed-use precinct comprising a shopping mall named ''Triangle des Gares'' designed by
Jean Nouvel, the
TGV station designed by Jean-Marie Duthilleul with two office towers above by architects
Christian de Portzamparc and
Claude Vasconi, a park designed by
Gilles Clément and a congress centre known as the ''Grand Palais'' designed by OMA. The masterplan also re-organized the infrastructure, a complicated junction of various transportation systems.
The initial development area has been extended since 2000 by another 22 hectares, named Euralille 2.
Project development
The project was financed as a private-public partnership, established in 1990. The ambitious program was delayed in part because of the mid-1990s real-estate market crisis.
[Bruinsma et al (2008)]
''Railway development: impacts on urban dynamics''
Physica Verlag Heidelberg
The first phase of the project opened in 1994 and continued to expand in the following decade. After the ''
Tour de Lille
Tour de Lille (previously known as Tour du Crédit-Lyonnais between 1995–2006) is an office skyscraper in Euralille, the business district of the Lille metropolitan area.
Designed by Christian de Portzamparc, this emblematic tower of the city ...
'' and ''
Tour Lilleurope
Tour Euralille is an office skyscraper in Euralille, the business district of the Lille metropolitan area.
Designed by Jean-Claude Burdèse and Claude Vasconi, 110 m high, it is the second tallest tower in Lille after the Tour de Lille.
The '' ...
'' office towers were completed in 1995, the Suite Hôtel was completed in 2005.
[Lille Metropole Development Agency]
"Euralille from end to end"
retrieved 27 April 2013
References
Further reading
*Espace Croisé and Isabelle Menu (ed.) (1996): ''Euralille: The Making of a New City Centre: Koolhaas, Nouvel, Portzamparc, Vaconi, Duthilleul'', Birkhäuser
External links
Euralille presentationby the Lille Metropole Development Agency
Zénith de Lille official website
Lille Grand Palais official website
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Lille