Lille Euralille 1 & 2
Core idea
HSR hub business district
Why it matters
Intercity rail urbanism
Description
Euralille is a business and services district planned around the new Lille-Europe high-speed rail station, masterplanned by OMA under Rem Koolhaas from 1989 and built through the 1990s, with a second phase, Euralille 2, following in the 2000s under later teams. The plan exploited Lille's position at the crossing of the Channel Tunnel and Paris-Brussels TGV lines, stacking a station, shopping centre, congress hall and office towers into a dense infrastructural complex beside the historic city.
Significance
Euralille became the emblematic project of high-speed rail urbanism, testing the proposition that a provincial city could convert a position in the European rail network into metropolitan-scale development. Koolhaas's embrace of bigness and infrastructural congestion made it a touchstone of 1990s urban design debate, and its mixed commercial fortunes have kept it central to discussions of station-area megaprojects across Europe and Asia.
What shaped it
- Delirious New York (1978)
- Maastricht Treaty / EU (1992)
- Postmodernism in architecture & planning (1977)
Plans it influenced
- Bordeaux Euratlantique (2009–)
- Marseille Euroméditerranée (1995–)
- Lyon Part-Dieu Masterplan (2010s)
- Strasbourg Deux Rives (2010s–)
- La Sagrera–Sant Andreu (Barcelona) Masterplan (2010)
- Zurich Europaallee (2006–)
- Utrecht Station Area Masterplan (CU2030) (2006–)