• The former Strasbourg Tobacco Factory continues its transformation into a university reception center dedicated to science and art.

    An incubator, a youth hostel, a grocery store and restaurants will also open there.

  • Open to the neighborhood, more than a thousand students should occupy the premises and will be a new hub for the arts, entrepreneurship, science, organic catering and short circuits of a neighborhood located a few hundred barely meters from the cathedral.

  • Already some facilities are open but the total end of the facilities is scheduled for the start of the 2023 school year.

It has already been 12 years since the future “anthill” of the Krutenau district in Strasbourg, the Tobacco Factory project, has been on the table.

After the plant closed in 2010, its construction could not really begin until 2018, slice by slice.

Last January, the allocation of the last available lot of 758 m2 was announced and we could hope for some installations by the summer, but a little patience will still be needed.

However, we feel that things are progressing rapidly, that the whole will soon be ready and delivered to become a real locomotive of culture, science, an innovative ecosystem in Strasbourg, a real anthill where students, local residents will meet , researchers, tourists, entrepreneurs and market gardeners, solidarity consumers, artists… .

For the time being, since last winter, only the Hostel The People, a kind of youth hostel, with its 250 beds and its restaurant bar, is open.

"It is both as a place of accommodation, which was missing for this type of public, underlines Alain Jund, elected to the city and delegate for the development of participatory housing, but also a place of café, bar, restaurant , a meeting place.

A place that has also allowed many Strasbourg residents to discover the interior of the Manufacture and even the terrace in summer, because access to the Manufacture was formerly forbidden”.

What schedule?

But ultimately, few Strasbourg residents still know what is really going on behind the high walls of this heritage site located in one of the city's most effervescent districts.

And especially "when it's all over".

A place of 15,000 m2, central, with emblematic industrial architecture dating from the 19th century which has been preserved, listed since December 2016 as a Historic Monument.

A place also located in the immediate vicinity of the university complex and a stone's throw from the cathedral.

“In 18 months, everything will be over, promises Alain Jund.

At the start of the school year in September 2023, the entire Manufacture will be occupied, the layout of the large courtyard will be completed.

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Then from next September to February, the National School of Water and Environmental Engineering (ENGEES) and the School of Geophysical Engineers (EOST), of the University of Strasbourg will return to their local.

“That will not be far from a good thousand students who will arrive in a few months, welcomes Alain Jund.

The opening takes place over several months, both to absorb the number of students, but also because there is still some finishing work to be done, but this is the important stage for the next school year.

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Next will come, by spring 2023, the installation of four structures: Eco-cloakroom, a sporting goods recycling project, Tiers-Lab/Faktory, a creative third place, La Source, a space developed by the Hydreos competitiveness cluster and finally the Krutenau music centre.

All distributed around the central structure, the lab, small restaurants but above all a local producer with a grocery store of local products, a green roof terrace with vegetable gardens for the kitchen of the restaurant below.

All open to the neighborhood.

And it is to the Hear, the Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin, which will have the honor of closing and taking full advantage of this rehabilitation at the start of the school year in September 2023.

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  • Strasbourg

  • Great East

  • Town planning

  • circular economy

  • University