We didn’t answer with an icon; we answered with an ecosystem. The design reinterprets the site’s historical parcel structure into a checkerboard grid that weaves together housing, co-living, offices, a nursery, coworking, and active ground-floor functions like cafés and mobility hubs. Volumes scale up gradually, responding to the incline from Cointe hill to the Meuse. The composition creates a porous urban landscape where public and private spaces interlock through a network of small squares, diagonal paths, and collective patios. Green dunes echo the topography of Liège while managing runoff, softening edges, and acting as thermal buffers. The ground floor remains accessible and walkable, linking soft mobility routes with planted zones and courtyards. The architecture makes programme legible: residential volumes read as domestic, with loggias and balconies; office façades expose the grid, tuned to use, sun, and structure. The goal was never to compose objects, but to establish a framework where form follows connection, orientation, and shared purpose.

Paradis Express doesn’t compete for attention; it earns its place by working with, rather than against, its context. The project aims to shift the logic of what a mixed-use district can be: not a collection of buildings, but a climate-conscious landscape that grows with its city. Shaded patios, planted slopes and tree-lined paths activate the ground floor and invite shared use throughout the day. Rainwater is absorbed and reused on site through green roofs, permeable surfaces and infiltration zones. A carefully layered vegetation plan, from ground covers to canopy trees, supports biodiversity and strengthens local microclimates. Spaces unfold in gradients: from communal gardens to quiet corners, from public routes to intimate thresholds. Pedestrians and cyclists move fluidly through a network of plazas and planted clearings. The design doesn’t impose, it enables, suggesting how density and ecological sensitivity can coexist. Here, architecture sets the conditions for cooler air, social exchange and urban life that adapts and endures.