Europäisches Parlament – Erneuerung Paul-Henri-Spaak-Gebäude in Brüssel (BE)

Beyond an up-cycling of the existing building, its intended purpose is to enhance engage-ment with citizens, which notably gets translated into an urban canyon carved through the SPINELLI building to connect it more strongly to the Agora Simone Veil and the city centre. A public passage on the ground level going from the Place du Luxembourg all the way to the Parc Léopold, thanks to an added passage created under the Parliament building itself, was considered an asset of the project. Amongst its most remarkable features is the fact that this public path stays at street level and in the open for much of the journey, thus effectively connecting the city to the Parliament and the park. From the point of view of public engagement, another strong feature of the project is its planted roof meant to be the building’s own “agora”, from which visitors would be able to look down on the activi-ties of the Parliament, in particular on the Chamber itself. The jury appreciated the elegant way of completing the building with a roof that was – both topologically and in its function – more organic than the rest, while remaining coherent with the building’s architectural expression.

Its architectural expression is conveyed most strikingly through its diagrid façade sur-rounding the whole volume in a regular trellis. This external façade confers a clean and contemporary texture to the volume it encloses, while offering some structural and security benefits, such as reinforced robustness through additional bracing and a better protected glazed envelope. Its materiality and regularity also offer the potential for an elegant in-tegration of photovoltaics, such as the ones suggested in some of the schematics for the roof, that could potentially be extended to the lateral façade as well on the most optimally exposed orientations.

The energy-efficiency of the envelope can be brought to high standards with the proposed design and addresses most other sustainability aspects satisfactorily.

In terms of functionality, the project aims to solve existing issues without a fundamental intervention, in line with its spirit of preserving the existing. By excavating two voids to offer an atrium for the visitors and place the trilogue and larger meeting rooms into a cluster, it proposes a new spatial organization that brings precious flexibility for the future.

In summary, the project is a genuine re-use proposal that offers an enhanced interface with the public and a new architectural expression to the building with some useful sustainability features.