Motown Trône

Client:
Motown Development 
Project location:
Rue du Trône 121-125, Brussels
Program:
7.000 m2 apartments, retail and cafe

Design for the transformation of a number of outdated office buildings into a metropolitan residential building with shops and a café in the plinth in the European district of Brussels.

Rue de Trêves with her metropolitan appearance due to the heterogeneous large scale structures from the eighties meets axially our building site at Rue du Trone with her traditional parcellation and chronologically mixed houses. Urbanistically our intention is to emphasize with our project the small-scale perimeter block parcellation of Rue du Trone in order to strengthen its residential physiognomy. 

The facades of the office buildings from the 1960s will be dismantled and replaced by a more open, urban and residential appearance, The existing concrete construction is preserved and a steep roof with apartments will be added. For the facades we took as precedent the building typology of Brussels to be found at Place Brugmann for example with her limestone facades, arched shopfronts towards the street, vertical windows and horizontal articulation with the steel ornamental fences of the balconies. 

Terraces and loggias of the residences are oriented towards the courtyard, liberated from its minor buildings to create a park-like setting. Since the sidewalk along this side of Rue du Trône has become all too narrow we introduce an arcade which indicates also the pedestrian access to the courtyard garden and its buildings. 

We have received the building permit, construction will start in 2025.