The spectrum of its activities has also broadened to highly complex missions. Thus at the age of just thirty, Olivier Dwek was entrusted with the redevelopment of the former Fabrique Nationale arms factory, in Liège, Belgium,into an eco-village with 350 modular homes including social housing, offices, a hotel and shops, an indoor organic market, a theatre, a cultural centre, a retirement home, a nursery and car parks.
The eco-responsible housing is built on the concrete slab of the upper floor of the former sheds which stretched for more than 200m, like a suspended city, interspersed with alleyways and squares, projections and voids. The industrial structure, twin buildings dating back to the inter-war years, veritable concrete colossuses, has lost none of its vigour in its new incarnation. The magisterial entrance emphasises the site’s monumentality and affirms a contemporary vision. Its sculptural aspect attests the hand of the architect who, for this project, set himself the exercise of providing maximum wellbeing whilst respecting a tight budget. The questions it asks are eminently rooted in the 21st century, in its socio-economic context, in its complex and necessary social mix and in the wealth of its diversity.
