This Saturday 16 June, the Commune of Saint-Gilles (Brussels Capital Region) will inaugurate its newly refurbished Parvis. Work began in 2017 and is currently in its final stages of completion. They covered nearly 6300m² of pedestrian space, and required precise phasing to maintain optimal traffic flow.
Over the last few decades, the Parvis de Saint-Gilles has become an emblematic place for sharing and exchange in the heart of the Brussels-Capital Region. The challenge of the project? Unify this pedestrian public space while preserving the fluidity of the Waterloo roadway.
The redevelopment is intended to bring both technical and aesthetic value. Bgroup-Greisch and the architectural office Bas Smets have collaborated on this audacious project, one of the strong points of which lies in the enhancement of the site’s heritage – thanks in particular to the reuse of the blue stone paving stones in place.
To be able to place granite blocks in a short time, and allow the joints to dry sufficiently to withstand heavy traffic, several adaptations had to be implemented. The contractor was able to close and re-open this roadway in 5 weeks thanks to:
- a redesigned phasing of the work;
- adaptation and improvement of joints between paving stones;
- a modification of the water recovery network by the installation of a parallel sewage network, in order to optimize and reduce as much as possible the connections under the Waterloo causeway.
Bgroup-Greisch’s reactivity enabled the project to be adapted on a day-to-day basis to solve unknown problems during the project phase, such as the precise location of the sewage system, the monitoring of the load-bearing capacity of the bottom and the subfoundations, the adaptation of the geometry, etc.
