Multiplicities and complicities: signifying the future at Euralille

Abstract

Euralille is a new quarter of the city of Lille in northern France, conceived and constructed over the past decade as a grand project based on the new role of Lille as a hub in the northern European high speed rail network. The design of the project has been directed by Rem Koolhaas with a vision for a new kind of urban life and aesthetic, geared to new sensibilities of globalization, time-space compression and virtual space. Euralille was conceived as a generic city of transition and movement rather than one of place and local identity. With the first stage completed in 1995, what is the relation between the professed ideas and the urban reality? The Euralille project is a visually exciting and programmatically innovative experiment and there is much we might learn from it. However, many of its innovations are not (at this stage) successful and some of its successes are familiar rather than new. The project could benefit from a better understanding of urban spatial structure, globalization and privatization.