Tour & Taxis Towers is a high-rise project under contemporary pressure. Beyond its 126-metre profile, the Brussels scheme has to justify its density through carbon reduction, ground-level public use and a programme that mixes offices, housing and civic functions.
Designed by MVRDV for real estate investor and developer Nextensa, the 58,000m2 project forms part of Lake Side, the final development zone within the wider Tour & Taxis transformation. The dual-tower scheme has received planning permission and brings together a 20-storey office tower, a 35-storey residential tower and a five-storey connecting plinth.
The western tower will become the new headquarters of Proximus, while the eastern tower will contain 199 apartments ranging from studios to three-bedroom homes.
A high-rise grid made less rigid
At first glance, the towers are disciplined and almost conventional. Their façades are organised through a regular grid, giving the buildings a controlled rhythm rather than a sculptural skyline gesture.
What gives the design its architectural interest is the way that grid is interrupted. The towers step in and out through irregular setbacks, creating terraces, deeper reveals and moments where the mass appears carved rather than simply stacked. In wider views, this softens the impact of the height. In closer views, it gives the façades depth and shadow, helping the towers read less as flat slabs and more as layered urban blocks.
This is not a neutral site edge. The towers stand where Lake Side’s residential grain meets heavier office and institutional blocks, so the massing has to negotiate scale rather than simply announce height. The setbacks help do that, breaking the volume into terraces, ledges and shadow lines that make the transition less abrupt.
Low-carbon design shapes the structure
The project’s carbon argument is carried through the structure rather than treated only as a certification target. MVRDV has designed the towers with a focus on reducing embodied carbon, using a hybrid structure and lightweight façade elements to limit the amount of concrete required in the structure and foundations.
The office tower will use a concrete frame supporting cross-laminated timber floor slabs. This decision forms part of a wider effort to reduce the building’s overall weight, with MVRDV’s CarbonSpace software used from an early stage to estimate embodied carbon before final design decisions were fixed.
That process gives the project its stronger contemporary relevance. The towers are not presented simply as dense, transit-adjacent urban development with green terraces attached. Their design asks a more specific question: how can a tall mixed-use building reduce the carbon load that is usually embedded into height itself?
The project is intended to align with the EU taxonomy criteria for sustainable activities. For the office spaces, the development is also targeting BREEAM Outstanding, DGNB Gold and WELL Core & Shell Platinum certification.
Public routes give the towers a civic base
The most convincing part of the design is at the base. The two towers are linked by a five-storey plinth containing offices and public programme, with a terrace above. At its centre, a passage connects the Lake Side area with Anna Bochlaan, while an atrium rises through the plinth and opens views into the office spaces above.
This is where the project moves beyond the usual high-rise formula. The images show a generous internal passage lined with timber, glazing and exposed structure, creating a civic interior rather than a closed corporate lobby. The space is not merely an entrance sequence for the buildings above. It is designed as a route through the block.
The residential tower also includes spaces for public services at its base, helping keep the lower levels active across the day. Without that public layer, the scheme would risk reading as two towers placed on a regeneration site rather than a piece of the district itself. The urban test for Tour & Taxis Towers will be whether the plinth becomes part of everyday movement through Lake Side, not only an address for the offices and homes above.
Lake Side completes the Tour & Taxis transformation
Tour & Taxis has been undergoing a long-term shift from a former industrial site into a new urban district. Lake Side is the final piece of that transformation, adding homes, offices, retail, hospitality, public amenities and green spaces to the Brussels North Quarter.
MVRDV also designed the Lake Side masterplan, giving the towers a wider role beyond their own footprint. The district is planned around a 15-minute-city model, with living, working, leisure and public facilities placed within walking distance.
Lake Side will include more than 700 homes, including social and subsidised housing, along with public facilities and green areas. Nextensa’s wider plan also includes a neighbourhood-level geothermal installation for heating and cooling, reinforcing the district-scale sustainability strategy rather than treating each building as a standalone object.
The Lake Side project requires an investment of approximately €555m and is planned across about eight years. Earthworks are expected to begin in summer 2026, with phased delivery continuing through the later part of the decade. Proximus is expected to start moving into the new offices from 2028.
A denser Brussels without the usual high-rise posture
The value of Tour & Taxis Towers lies in the tension it accepts rather than avoids. It is still a large high-rise project, and its carbon claims will ultimately depend on delivery, measurement and long-term use. But architecturally, it does not treat height as spectacle.
The towers use a repeated façade grid to create order, then offset that order through terraces, setbacks, planted edges and public routes. The result is a design that feels more concerned with urban continuity than skyline drama.
That makes the project a useful case study for Brussels. Tour & Taxis Towers does not resolve every contradiction of building tall in a low-carbon age. It does something more grounded: it shows how those contradictions can be made visible in the design, from the structure and façade to the way the building meets the street.
