Campus Belval

Vision

 

Luxembourg is redefining itself: From being a steel region to being a financial centre, the country now wants to morph onwards and become a research hub. In Belval there are plans to turn this vision into reality.

Where once the chimneys of blast furnaces poured out their smoke soon heads will be steaming. With that motto, on the industrial wasteland of Belval, about 20 kilometres southwest of the city of Luxembourg, a completely new neighbourhood is going up on the territory of the local communities of Esch/Alzette and Sassenheim, in the very shadow of the old blast furnaces.

Belval is considered to be one of the largest and most ambitious current urban renewal projects in Europe. On the 120 hectares of grounds that once housed Luxembourg's largest steel foundry, academic research and teaching, work and leisure, industry and commerce and home life and culture are to enter into a thriving mixture. Based on a master plan created by Jo Coenen Architects of Maastricht, the development corporation Agora as well as the public Fonds Belval are bringing this new site into being.

The university on Belval

 

The "Cité des Sciences" (City of Science) is Belval's headway project pure and simple. The first phase of the project, budgeted at EUR 600 million and comprising about 20 new buildings on the grounds of the blast furnace plateau, will house the University of Luxembourg as well as off-university research centres and a start-up centre. In its ultimate expansion, around 7000 students and 3000 teaching staff and researchers will be at work here.

As early as autumn 2011 the university will mark its presence with the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) at Belval. Moving the entire university, currently spread out across numerous sites, is expected to start in 2014. Only the Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance will stay, partially, in the capital.