KENNEDY ENSEMBLE HISTORY

The Kennedy ensemble is presented in this chapter more into details. The evolution of the design by the architects will be analysed in regard of the built situation. The chapter will present the architectural, programatic and aesthetic characteristics of the ensemble and finally how the building is perceived today.

The Kennedy ensemble is one of the most iconic modernist expressions in Liège landscape. Its construction defines the regeneration of the André Dumont neighbourhood. Based on Jean Royer’s master plan, the Kennedy ensemble houses both provincial and municipal libraries with a cultural centre, a parking lot, a housing tower and two smaller towers for private offices.

The big investor group S.A. Solico, founded in 1955 and still active today in Liège, concluded in 1968 with the government a contract to build the ensemble. Indeed, the city ceded the plot to the investor in return for the construction of the library and cultural centre at its own expense. Solico group charged Jean Poskin and Henri Bonhomme, two famous modernist architects in the city who realised several significant buildings in Liège, to design the plans of the ensemble. The associated architects were involved in many projects that were representative for the modernist movement in the region such as the Cité administrative (1967), the résidence Georges Simenon (1967) or the Société générale de banque (1985), leaving in Liège an audacious heritage from the XXth century.

For the Kennedy ensemble, Jean Lejeune suggested in 1964 that from the wide terrace covering the 600 places parking volume, two twin towers housing dwellings, offices and a hotel would rise up. The circular volume would be the Chiroux library. The first architects’ sketches, following this concept, illustrate the imagination of Oscar Niemeyer’s (1907-2012) design for the international congress in Brasilia.

The project developed to the form that has been build is the following : one single high tower emerges from the triangle shape plinth and two smaller office towers emerge from the parking block; the cylindric volume for the cultural centre appears from the Place des Carmes. From the large terrace designated to the public, in the first sketch, only the footbridge along the avenue Maurice Destenay from the Place des Carmes remains. This bridge links the two islands by crossing the rue des Croisiers. Apart from the central hole in the tower meant for a shared terrace, the project was realised as presented.

The construction broke ground on the 28 of October 1968 (the same day as the Cité administrative unveiling) and will be delivered in 1971. The Chiroux library remained open during the construction process, waiting the opening of the new library, afterwards, in 1970, it was torned down. As a result, the construction of the ensemble is divided in two phases and the facade still carries traces of those stages. Six times bigger than the previous one, the new combined library became the biggest public book collection in Wallonia.

On the ground floor of the public part, it is almost 1600m2 of commercial space that was created and the children library is in the corner facing the river meuse. The 6130m2 cultural centre takes place in the six-storey cylindric volume consisting of the following aspects :

Underground : the performance hall, the exhibition space, the film and music library and the bank of arts;

Ground floor : the commercial area and cafeteria;

First floor : the children’s creative hub and the historical core of the Walloon movement;

Second floor : the reading room;

Third and fourth floor : the archives

Upper floor : the cultural affairs and fine-arts department.

The bridge-building that connects the Cultural centre to the main library in the triangle shape building, is housing the main reading room. Composed of two storeys, the huge Chiroux library is accessible from the rue des Croisiers entrance on the ground floor and leads the visitors to the different collection departments. A part of the third floor of the principal building is dedicated to the archives and staff offices. The last floor on the roof is a divided entity with on one side an area open for artist workshops and on the other side the school for future librarians combined with the dining area. On the central space, under the tower, the facilities and the teachers offices of the school are located.

The rest of the ensemble is composed of three towers :

The Kennedy tower, the most prominent building of the ensemble. With a 85 meters height, it contains of 216 dwellings spread out on 25 levels with two entrances, one in the rue des Croisiers and one facing the Kennedy’s bridge. Some private storage and a small parking lot in the basement of the library are accessible from the inside of the tower only for the inhabitants.

The two other seven floor towers are dedicated to two private owners, the SMAP and the Mutualité chrétienne. They both have their commercial area on the ground floor and their private offices in the towers above. The in-between volume is a big parking lot for 570 cars.

The concrete structure of the building is really part of its identity and is expressed on the facades. The main structure is composed of a post (50/50) and beam (50/60) grid allowing a freedom in the use and displaying the different functions. The Kennedy tower inserts itself in this grid with a mix structure of wall and post (140/100).

The cylinder is composed of a central hard core, with the vertical circulations, and beams bearing on round piles (°50). The bridge-building is hold by a central cross shape post in the middle of the rue des Croisiers.

The Kennedy tower, is the most iconic landmark in the skyline of Liège, due to its height and its shape. Its remarkable 85m height gave it the position of the highest building in the city until 1978; as then the construction of the Atlas tower took place with the height of 87m; dethroned in turn in 2015 by the Paradis Tower with the height of 118m.

The Kennedy ensemble with its tower, that faces the river Meuse and the bridge, from which it takes its name, is framed by two other towers. The base with the rotunda bellow the towers constitutes the most successful expression of brutalism in the centre of Liège.8 It is a unique combination of cultural, commercial and housing functions. This part of the Jean Royer’s master plan fulfils a strong cultural layer in the neighbourhood, in particular by being a relevant interpretation of the modernist language of the XXth century.

Critic and teacher at the London Royal College of art, JJ Charlesworth (°1947) wrote: “The Chiroux are to Liège, close to what the British architectural critic Reyner Banham qualified as megastructure. With its archways and its raised footbridge, the Chiroux ensemble combines some commerce, some offices, a cafe, a library, a media library and a housing tower in a set of interconnected structures delimited by the futuristic rotunda topical of the 60’s on the St Paul street side and extending on the rue des Croisiers that it also overlooks. In my opinion, the Chiroux represent the perfect example of the modernist vision after the war of an integrated total merger of architecture and urban planning. A multifunctional structure combining and incorporating the traffic within instead of a complex delimited by the preexisting circulation axes. The Chiroux ensemble is remarkable in the way it exemplifies the attempt to integrate the architecture and its urban environment. It also poses a number of questions regarding the modernist project and its limits in terms of urban development policy.”9

The authority presented in 2018 the aim of creating a new cultural hub combining the Chiroux library and the Théâtre de la place on the Bavière site, in Outremeuse. The new building will be completed in 2022. The huge collection and the cultural centre, forming the plinth of the Kennedy ensemble, will be moved in the new building in Outremeuse. No information has been presented for the future reuse of the actual buildings.