Situated at
Libin-Transinne along the highway that connects Brussels
to Luxemburg, the Euro Space Center
is responsible for the diffusion of knowledge concerning space exploration activities
and telecommunications in Europe.
In addition to
exhibition and interactivity facilities, it offers students and the general
public seminars to familiarize them with space sciences. Even though the
existing building, realized with limited resources, does not facilitate their
perception from the outside, the activities carried out there are of a
particularly high intellectual level.
This is precisely
why diverse enterprises active in the sector of space telecommunications desire
to establish facilities on the site.
The project
anticipates housing them in a kind of modular "hamlet " on
site consisting of 2- to 4-floor wooden constructions arranged in an evolutive
geometrical configuration.
A large
parallelepiped (52.80 m long, 43.20 m wide and 16.20 m high),
conceived like a raised horticultural greenhouse, will house the ensemble under
a common roof.
The glassed facade
along the highway is prolonged by a 120-m-long gallery that clads the existing
building.
The reception hall
and the gallery are rhythmed in
4.80-m-sided elements of slender steel tubes. Four horizontal layers of
cables, distant from one another by 3.24 m, connect the vertical tubes in both orthogonal
directions to impede buckling.
The stresses
inducted by the cables, as well as the stresses induced by wind, are diffused
on the periphery by vertical trellised girders constituted of pairs of posts
connected to one another by horizontal cross-bars and cables in a cross
formation.
This
three-dimensional ensemble of bars and cables is the ideal support for large
banners, both on a two-dimensional plane as well as three-dimensional,
signaling to users of the highway the nature of the activities of this center
and the presence of partner enterprises.
The
southern slopes of the roof and façade elements are equipped with photovoltaic
panels on a total surface of 5.060 sqm.
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