Sustainable City Grand Prize winner of the Green Solutions Awards 2017: Cité du Centenaire (Belgium)
Nadège Rigaudeau
The Cité du Centenaire in Charleroi is a urban renewal project and the transformation into an ecodistrict of a 1959 neighbourhood inspired by garden cities. While moving the Cité du Centenaire toward sustainability, this project also had to protect and rehabilitate an architectural heritage.
The sustainability approach integrates ecomobilities and soft transportation modes, energy efficiency through passive renovations and constructions of housings, the drastic reduction of the district carbon footprint while favouring social bonding and interactions within the area.
To limit the environmental impact of the operation, demolition waste was reused and recycled, after sanitizing the buildings from all asbestos. All construction work included as much as possible recyclable and low emission materials.
This ecodistrict naturally aims to respond to its inhabitants’ needs who were involved in the operation from the design phase. Children from the surrounding schools also participated in an art project to dress one of the buildings’ gable. Mineral wool panels were coloured in the many tints collected in the demolished building to offer a genuine testimonial of past lives in the district. This piece of art now gives a strong identity to the Cité du Centenaire ecodistrict.
- Project holder: La Sambrienne
- Designer: Startech Management Group
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