Réimerwee Ensemble 4 - Lot 20

A sustainable project accessible to all budgets

It finds expression in a brick façade to the road side (north) and a wood façade to the park side (south). The two main entrances, cutting through the building, and their vertical access ways will shape the project.

A shop is proposed at the street corner, allowing it to have a terrace on two sides. The ground-floor apartments come with small gardens and private terraces, which will enliven the public space. To reinforce this effect, the remaining space is offered to residents in the form of community gardens. These meeting-places will encourage social ties, mixing families and generations.

The project comprises 29 apartments, including eight affordable properties. The various levels offer a wide variety of housing types, ranging from single bedroom to four-bedroom duplex units. The plans for the apartments are designed in such a way that they can be opened up, thus allowing great flexibility over the interior design.

Close collaboration with the statics engineers, technical engineers and energy engineers from the start of the design has enabled the architects to perfect a coherent project which integrates smart solutions to the various challenges of a sustainable build that respects the environment.

In a hybrid wood-and-concrete building, the smooth mushroom slabs and the columns, in reinforced concrete, are employed advantageously to configure the various types of apartment in a flexible manner. The bracing is provided by the stairwells and lift shafts. The façade, called a lightweight façade, is prefabricated in wood.

Its construction ensures that it is removable and adaptable, in the spirit of the circular economy. Equally, the consortium wants to make best use of recycled and/or recyclable materials, with the lowest impact on the environment. For its project, the team has also studied recovery and second life for some high-quality elements, notably the wood cladding, the slabs and the sanitary appliances. The aim is to encourage short distribution chains and to make maximum use of “cradle to cradle” (C2C) materials, which will also allow the development to obtain national LENOZ (Lëtzebuerger Nohaltegkeetszertifizéierung) certification.

The development is a near zero-energy building, with very good energy performance. The building comes into the A+ energy performance class for primary energy needs, heating requirements and CO₂ emissions.

The team’s philosophy is to realize a low tech/high energy efficiency building which, by embracing technological simplicity, manages to boost heating comfort whilst reducing the impacts on the environment and on maintenance costs.

The green roofs increase rainwater retention on site, for recovery and storage in tanks located below the external pedestrian entrances. The water will be used to irrigate the private gardens and in WCs, in the laundry facilities and for washing down large surfaces.

The car park can accommodate up to 30 cars, thanks to a computer-controlled mechanized system. Charging points for electric cars are also provided. The bike store, equipped with a rack for parking the bikes, is located at the bottom of the access ramp.