Water treatment plant in Ans

Programme: Construction of a water treatment plant in order to control the evolution of nitrates and pesticides levels in distribution water. The project includes the construction of a water treatment plant and reception building, a maintenance building for the infrastructures and a pumping station. To welcome visitors, an auditorium with 141 seats, a meeting room and a reception hall have been built. The project also includes landscaping of the entire site.

About: The site is located in Ans, near Liège. Anything structures the site. Only the relief and the slope of the land towards Liège define the space. The objective is to restore the site to its natural state by integrating the treatment and maintenance buildings on the relief and avoid the stereotype of the industrial building planted in the middle of a concrete platform. The new buildings are non-complex volume. Particular care has been taken not to alter the purity of the lines by systematically avoiding the addition of technical elements. These are integrated into the volumes and not visible from the outside. The volumes are treated with industrial materials but the technical details are precise. The water treatment plant is covered with a double skin made of perforated metal cladding in white color allowing all the technical openings and external equipment to be placed in the background. The interstitial space which it frees up makes it possible to place two technical circulation which serve locally as an escape route. Wood-clad hollows are made in the unitary skin of the buildings. The integrated technical doors are also clad and are not visible. The roofs of the buildings constitute a fifth facade seen from the “coteaux” of Liège. That of the treatment building is covered with photovoltaic panels integrated into the plan of the roof. The other roofs are green.