Montefiore Institute in Liège

The former Montefiore Institute, a listed building with a high heritage value, located on rue St Gilles in Liège, is being completely renovated to bring together more than 500 RESA employees on the site. These people will be split between the Montefiore site and the adjacent boulevard d’Avroy site. A new atrium will be built between the two sites to connect the buildings.  This connection consists of a central staircase and slender concrete footbridges that zigzag along the blind wall of Montefiore. To achieve this, it is necessary to reinforce the structures of the existing underground car park.

To extend the office space available in the main Montefiore building, a new office building is being constructed on the site to replace existing buildings of lesser interest that have been demolished. The structure of the offices is entirely prefabricated (floor slabs, columns, beams and walls). The former amphitheatre, also a listed building, has been completely renovated to become a conference centre.  On the street side, the building, which is also listed, is to be renovated to house a gourmet restaurant.

Opposite the offices and amphitheatre is a new 21-unit apartment building, with hollow-core floors and a concrete framework.

Lastly, all these buildings are built around a large, shared esplanade-garden, under which a ground-floor-3 car park with 174 spaces has been built, bounded by an enclosure of secant reinforced concrete piles with a diameter of 80 cm every 70 cm. These piles are driven into the rock and supported by tie rods located just below the neighbouring cellars in the provisional phase. The invert of the car park is set in the underlying rock to take up the pressure of the water, and the floors are slabs supported by a concrete beam-column framework.