Projected around a disused marshalling yard just north of the centre of Antwerp is this large-scale shopping complex, there to reanimate the existing inner city. The increase in motorized traffic in many cities, Antwerp among them, has forced a deep rift between the centre and the periphery. Countless symptoms point to the loss of the city centre. The crucial question posed by this scheme was whether the conditions of the periphery could not be proffered in a more compact fabric woven in close proximity to the inner city, with a programme complementing that of the centre.

This design seeks the answer in transcribing the peripheral building syntax to an urban context. New spatial typologies needed developing. The road, the primary requisite for peripheral shopping centres, here takes the shape of a spatial circuit. This circuit is so laid out as to satisfy the conditions and patterns of the programmes, such as maximum accessibility, parking standards and specified walking distances to escape routes and other accesses. The streets of the adjoining nineteenth-century district slice across the circuit, strengthening its relationship with the inner city fabric. Each of these extended streets has its own theme or a particular function, such as night street or arcade. The old marshalling yard has ceded to a spatial system of roads and streets with saleable plots for a host of functions. The scheme provides the conditions necessary to creating a large-scale shopping centre that can revivify the existing centre of Antwerp.

Place of education: TU Delft
Tutors: Carel Weeber, Willem Hermans, Hans Daane & Arie Graafland
Specialization: architecture.