Port House, Antwerp
With this project the new Port House gets the best possible location: on the edge of the city, with a view on the harbour, on the river and on the city. The former fire station not only becomes a dense work space, but also the new face of the Port House and the place where the relation between port and city is mediated.
The immediate surroundings will modify dramatically in the near future. After the demolition of the silos, the fire station is again situated in the axis of the dock. A project for an imposing new bridge “Lange Wapper” is planned. Therefore an adjustment to these new proportions arises.
As a typical city block – that separates private and public – the existing building seems lost in the context of a port. Nevertheless the building takes its strong identity from this ‘displacement’. For us, any project for a horizontal extension will weaken the strong basic form.
We propose an extension that towers high above the new bridge. The new element has an identical footprint to the existing building. Doing so, the distorted proportions are rectified and the new Port House thus becomes a new composition consisting of the heavy rhythmical fire station, a vertical and transparent iron core, and an abstract floating volume, with the horizontal bridge as a background. In this way, the ensemble will play its own role in the skyline of the port.
