Inaugurated in Liège on 20th and 21st
October 2009, the Médiacité (designed by Ron Arad with
the Belgian architectural company, Jaspers-Eyersis) is an
urban development project created by the developer-
contractor Wilhelm & Co. Its goal: to revitalize an entire
neighbourhood by deploying in an area of more than 6.5
hectares, 160,000 m2 of promising economic activities,
shopping, culture and recreation.
For
Médiacité, the challenges were many.
The most important of these was probably to transform a
totally moribund area into a new dynamic and attractive
urban centre.
To make one of the largest brown-field sites in the city
centre, a genuine "city within a city", multifunctional and
simultaneously dedicated to business, recreation, culture,
and economic activities with high added value. Everything
based on a central theme (in terms of image as well as
socio-economic development for an entire region): the
audiovisual and media.
Designed with an
extreme concern for aesthetics and the functionality of
sustainability, Médiacité expresses the philosophy of the
Wilhelm & Co group perfectly. Combining modernity and
high environmental quality, it would also like to be seen as
a bold and functional architectural design signed off by the
English architect designer Ron Arad along with his well-
known consultants Jaspers-Eyers and Chapman Taylor.
The Design and Architecture unit of Wilhelm & Co, directed
by Nicole Van den Plas, has been the partner
accompanying all the examples of this architectural
flamboyance, which has already made an impact on the
transformation of a whole neighbourhood.
In
the manner of futurist and space age towns of the “3D”
culture, Ron Arad has outlined for Médiacité sinuous,
tubular architecture more than 400 metres long, both
hyper-artificial and hyper-natural. Artificial in the
innovative materials in its structure, natural in its aerial
texture, its organic form and its daylight. Playing on the
curves and the anamorphosis, the space lives and
breathes. Walking through it even seems like a game when
the sky is transformed into a red, transparent chessboard.
Images from above: Photo JL Deru; Photo
Van Gelooven; Photo Van Gelooven; Photo JL Deru; Photo
JL Deru; Photo JC Dessart
Médiacité by Ron Arad, Liège
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- Elena Sommariva
- 09 December 2009