Karres and Brands has won second prize in the international competition for the redesign of the historic centre of Diekirch, Luxembourg. Not the top prize, but a clear recognition for a design that looks beyond a new layout alone: how do you give a historic city centre back to pedestrians, make room for climate adaptation, and make history tangible without reconstructing the past too literally?

Diekirch, on the Sauer at the foot of the Ardennes, cannot be read from a single square, but from the sequence of streets, alleys, water and landscape that have shaped the city for centuries. Traffic, fragmented layout and technical additions have pushed this coherence into the background and weakened the relationship between city, river and landscape. The succession of hot summers in recent years makes the urgency visible: city centres need to be better equipped against prolonged heat, with shade, cooling and water retention as a structuring design principle rather than an afterthought. The design for the city centre therefore does not start with new icons, but with making visible again what is already there: the historic structure of city walls, gates and level differences is reread and translated into a contemporary, climate-adaptive city centre. Not by reconstructing the past, but by making the underlying spatial logic a guiding force for the city of tomorrow again.

The main cross-axis of the city centre forms the backbone of the plan. Within it, the redesign of Place de la Libération forms the hinge between the historic core, the surrounding neighbourhoods and the river. Along these axes, the vanished Millebaach returns as a visible water structure: the former course of the stream becomes tangible again, while providing cooling, infiltration and quality of stay at the same time. At the historic city gates, the entrances to the centre are greened: narrow passages, now mostly functional, become places to stay with shade and planting, where living, shopping and meeting come together in a pleasant retail and stay environment. In this way, the historic route through the city becomes a continuous, experiential walk from gate to gate again.

A lighting vision, developed with Studio DL, also turns the city centre into an attractive destination after dark: light accentuates the historic structure without disturbing the calm of the material palette. Together with TR engineering, the climate-adaptive task, water retention, infiltration and biodiversity, has been integrated into the street profile, so that technology never feels like an addition but a natural part of the experience. By moving cars to the edges of the centre, room is created for greenery, pedestrians and places to stay in the spots where through traffic used to dominate. The result is a city centre in which history, climate and everyday use once again form one coherent whole, not by reinventing itself, but by rediscovering and reinforcing its own qualities.