Brussels’s permanent building site

By Tim King

Date: 22/06/06

The physical landscape of Brussels's European quarter is in a state of perpetual construction and reconstruction.

The Commission's refurbished headquarters, the Berlaymont, has been open less than two years. Now the JECL building (so called because it is bounded by the avenue de la Joyeuse Entrée, avenue de Cortenbergh and rue de la Loi), a building which the Commission has occupied since the 1950s, is being emptied and will be demolished. Quite what will be put in its place is uncertain, although the owner, insurance company Axa, has recently resumed negotiations with the Commission about an office block and conference centre.

Quite what will be put in its place is uncertain, although the owner, insurance company Axa, has recently resumed negotiations with the Commission about an office block and conference centre.

This year, the courtyard at the front of the Justus Lipsius building is being covered over to create workspace for the world's press when they attend EU summits. The work should be completed between September and October, in good time for the December summit.

Early next year, the Council will take possession of a new building that is currently being built just beside Schuman railway station, across the other side of rue de la Loi from the Commission's Charlemagne building. Known as the Lex building, behind its distinctive curved frontage will be 57,600 sq. m, spread across 14 floors, enough to accommodate 1,300 translators, allowing the Council to move staff out of the space it has leased temporarily further out of town at Woluwe Heights and in the Rolin building on the junction of chaussée de Wavre and boulevard Général Jacques. The Council will also surrender space it has leased since 1995 on square Frère Orban. The logistics of moving staff into the Lex building will take several months but they should all be in place by the end of next year.

The Council has a further project to build another 50,000 sq. m, as an extension to the Justus Lipsius building. It will take over one of the three buildings of the Résidence Palace, the one closest to Justus Lipsius. The plan is to keep much of the L-shaped building constructed in 1926, on which there are preservation orders, but do away with the 1969 frontage visible from rue de la Loi. The design chosen last September after an architectural competition includes an egg-like structure of meeting rooms and offices, encased in a glass box, which will sit between the arms of the 'L' (see below right). The site is complicated not just by the protection of parts of the existing structure but also by plans to create a new railway line underneath, which will run from Etterbeek to place Luxembourg and out to the airport at Zaventem. The railway tunnel will cut underneath part of the site.

Indeed the first work that passers-by will see on the site next year will not be on the Council building but the excavations for the railway tunnel. A revamped station is supposed to integrate the Metro with the existing and new railway lines.

Only after that railway work is complete can construction of the new Council building begin. The Council has embarked on commissioning an environmental impact study and preparing the necessary reports aimed at winning building permission in 2008. Construction would then begin in 2009 and last until 2013. The landscape around Schuman will be evolving for several years yet.

Article reports on recent developments and plans concerning the European institutions' building policy in Brussels.
Article is part of a European Voice Special Report, 'Brussels property'.