The city put forward a flexible, contemporary space that should both present art and be an urban meeting place. At the start of 2019, Leuven issued an ‘open call’ for this via the Flemish Government Architect. The new government team is continuing that plan and the architecture competition is now settled. The laureate is the British firm Sergison Bates Architects, which is working together with eld, the theatre designers Charcoalblue and landscape architect Günther Vogt.

Within this consortium, SuReal takes care of the sustainability. It is taking on a range of tasks for this, including sustainability guidance from the master plan level to the final delivery of the project.

After the contract was awarded, SuReal guided the consortium in terms of the master plan and the project design. A sustainability meter was tailored to this, in order to be able to evaluate both the master plan and the building design. This sustainability instrument has been drawn up on the basis of other sustainability instruments: GRO, Sustainability meter for neighbourhoods, Sustainability meter for schools, etc.

In this way, the sustainability guidance has helped to shape the master plan. The current site around the building includes small watercourses, outdated residential areas, traditional streets strongly devoted to motorised traffic, limited greenery, etc. The master plan has introduced many accents through, among other things, the sustainability guidance: transformation of streets to more accessible for pedestrians and cyclists, more greenery in the streets to improve the city’s biodiversity and reduce the heat island effect, making underground watercourses visible again, etc.

Specifically at site level, this sustainability guidance gave rise to a global analysis of the broad sustainability of the project. Various points of attention were put forward that were subsequently worked out in more detail by the consortium. For example, it was noted that ecology (greenery, planting, biodiversity, …) is an important aspect that requires attention, wind comfort for pedestrians on and around the site was highlighted, etc.

Finally, SuReal also provides a technical-economic analysis with regard to renewable energy technologies and the EPB reporting. Due to the high correlation between both, and the influence of these technologies on the CAPEX and OPEX of the project, SuReal was appointed to thoroughly calculate both.