The tower and pumping station built in 1928 are part of the complex of the long-closed ARCED steel plant in the Luxembourg city of Dudelange. During the reconstruction, this industrial area is now being transformed into a "cluster" of cultural institutions, and as a result, these two buildings became neighbors of the new building of the National Multimedia Center (CNA). The CNA management decided to adapt them to their expositions, especially since the status of an architectural monument protected the tower and station from possible demolition.
In the 56-meter tower, exhibition halls were set up in an octagonal base and at the top, in a former water tank. They are connected by a panoramic elevator shaft, on which visitors go upstairs, and a spiral open staircase, along which they descend. The new parts of the building are made of "rough" concrete, on the surface of which traces of wooden formwork are visible: this is how they can be easily distinguished from the shotcrete of the historical structure of the tower. The staircase is fitted with a solid steel rail.
The intersection of straight and curved lines of the old and new parts of the tower against the sky creates a graphic effect conceived by the architects. Visitors walking downstairs can also observe it; they can also admire the views of the surroundings not only from the stairs, but also from a special platform under the tank.
Both exhibition halls of the tower are almost devoid of natural light sources, which is optimal for their permanent exhibition - the Bitter Years exhibition, created by curator and photographer Edward Steichen in 1962 for the MoMA Museum in New York and donated by him in 1967 to his native Luxembourg. It was composed of photographs of rural America during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Visitors get to the tower through the building of the pumping station, having first bought a ticket in a transport container converted into a ticket office. Temporary exhibitions are held in its spacious premises; the brick walls of this building were left practically intact. The passage from the station to the base of the tower is arranged along one more container, quite in the spirit of the general industrial style.
