Strasbourg, France
Designed by LAN Architecture and TOA Architectes Associés, NoLiStra (from the French for “New Location Strasbourg”) is devised to form a new district in Strasbourg, bridging the historic city centre and the Neudorf neighbourhood.
The new multi-purpose ensemble is located at the heart of the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg and is composed of eight buildings that span almost 22,000 sq. metres that combine housing, offices, retail spaces and a hotel.
The project represents the strategic core of the urban ambition for this new Euro-metropole and aims to create a second centrality, attractive and open to the river Rhin.
The entire complex is composed of 7 parallelepipeds and their volumes are positioned so they define two public spaces.
It consists in taking benefits of the “passage” condition of the block and using architecture to generate strong relations and interesting urban situations.
The variety of the programme and typology of dwellings is intended to encourage the vitality of what the architects call “a new place for Strasbourg”, and the diversity of users who flow through its spaces.
Mimicking the variety of fragmented and heterogeneous historic blocks, eight large coloured volumes are positioned in an apparently untidy way around a central green space.
In reality, the spacing and relationships between the buildings have been carefully defined by the architects.
The façades of the eight buildings in Saint Urbain are undoubtedly the main element of LAN’s design.
The colour palettes chosen by the architects and the repetitiveness of the windows characterise the entire project.
These choices also go in the direction of wanting to interpret the urban dynamics of Strasbourg’s city centre in a contemporary way.
The project involved a number of technical challenges – such as the creation of 490 different pieces of metal formwork to build the large concrete crosses that form the façades in colours echoing Strasbourg’s typical Petite-France neighbourhood.
Nolistra new district in Strasbourg
Architects: LAN Architecture
Architects of Record: TOA Architectes Associés
Client: ADIM EST
General Contractor: Urban Dumez, subsidiary of VINCI Construction France
Photographers: Charly Broyez and Lorenzo Zandri
