Euralille is an urban quarter in the centre of
Lille
Lille (, ; ; ; ; ) is a city in the northern part of France, within French Flanders. Positioned along the Deûle river, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France Regions of France, region, the Prefectures in F ...
, France. Conceived as a major European business district in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it is strategically located at the intersection of the
high-speed rail
High-speed rail (HSR) is a type of rail transport network utilising trains that run significantly faster than those of traditional rail, using an integrated system of specialised rolling stock and dedicated railway track, tracks. While there is ...
way lines linking
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
,
Brussels
Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...
, and
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, and incorporates the
Gare de Lille Europe 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.
[ 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
Jean Nouvel (; born 12 August 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of ''Mars 1976'' and ''Syndicat de l'Architecture'', France’s first labor union for architects. He has ob ...
, the
TGV station designed by Jean-Marie Duthilleul with two office towers above by architects
Christian de Portzamparc
Christian de Portzamparc (; born 5 May 1944) is a French architect and urbanist.
He graduated from the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1970. His projects reflect a sensibility to their environment and to urbanism that is a found ...
and
Claude Vasconi, the
Parc Henri Matisse 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 or Tours may refer to:
Travel
* Tourism, travel for pleasure
* Tour of duty, a period of time spent in military service
* Campus tour, a journey through a college or university's campus
* Guided tour, a journey through a location, directe ...
'' and ''
Tour Lilleurope'' 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
*Valéry Didelon, « Surfing the Wave of Neoliberalism: Rem Koolhaas in Lille », in Kenny Cupers, Catharina Gabrielsson & Helena Mattsson (Eds), ''Neoliberalism on the Ground: Architecture and Transformation from the 1960’s to the Present'', Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020.
External links
Euralille presentationby the Lille Metropole Development Agency
Zénith de Lille official website
Lille Grand Palais official website
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Lille