On Thursday, 30 January, the IBA Alzette Belval prefiguration mission was launched at the University of Luxembourg. This event marks the beginning of the IBA (International building exhibition) process, an innovative urban project for the French-Luxembourg territory of Alzette Belval, an area of 170 km2, consisting of 12 French and Luxembourgish municipalities and around 100,000 inhabitants.
The goal of the IBA is to position the Alzette Belval territory internationally as a model of a European cross-border region with shared land use planning and innovative projects in the field of architecture, urban planning and territorial development.
The University works with the project leader European Grouping for Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) and carries out the preliminary feasibility study of the IBA Alzette Belval. It aims to determine the unifying theme of the IBA, determines targeted areas of action and plan a series of pilot projects.
Researchers of the University’s Faculty of Science Humanities, Education and Social Sciences will work on the spatial-conceptual production. Florian Hertweck, professor of architecture at the University, is one of the principal investigators. He explains the University’s role in the project: “With its scientific and conceptual know-how, the University of Luxembourg will play an important role in the preparation of the IBA Alzette-Belval. We will work with our partners to ensure that the IBA Alzette-Belval will be a European model for transnational urban-rural development that will break new ground in the planning and implementation of affordable housing, with new forms of land use, citizen participation and project allocation.”
Dorothée Habay-Lê, Director of the EGTC Alzette Belval adds: “The territory of Alzette Belval has been involved in cross-border cooperation for many years. The creation of an EGTC in 2013 was a great opportunity to stabilise cross-border projects and to build the cross-border agglomeration together. The IBA project is a step closer to operational projects of spatial planning, architecture and development, co-constructed between French and Luxembourgers in this European territory.”