Plateau de Kirchberg, Luxembourg

Abstract

LATZ + PARTNER’S WORK since 1991 on one of the most important urban development projects in Europe on the outskirts of the city of Luxembourg is no less extensive, complex and ambitious than the Marburg-Lahnberge and Ulm projects. “The once essentially rural area of 360 hectares on the Plateau de Kirchberg, with its highly individual topography, fringed by valleys, only half a kilometre east of the capital city centre, experienced its first serious jolt in 1952, when Luxembourg was chosen as the headquarters of the European Coal and Steel Community. Expansion in the European Community attracted additional European institutions in subsequent stages. Some of these were placed in Luxembourg, which ultimately overloaded the office space capacity available within the historic city centre. The state met this emergency by compulsorily purchasing the Kirchberg land and in 1961 passed an act commissioning the ‘Fonds d’Urbanisation et d’Aménagement du Plateau de Kirchberg’ to plan the new urban district. The ‘Pont Grande-Duchesse Charlotte’, built in 1963 to plans by Egon Jux, and significantly called the ‘Red Bridge’ by the local people, boldly spans the Alzette valley and links the centre of Luxembourg with the plateau, on which a new city district with five quarters developed in the course of a few decades.”