At the request of the University of Antwerp (UA), DMT architecten developed a master plan for the building located south of Paardenmarkt, in the city centre of Antwerp. In collaboration with Maat-Werk architecten, DMT designed a campus for product development training for the Faculty of Design Sciences. The result is a clear and surprising project that creates connections with the existing campus and the urban space, while encompassing and highlighting the different eras of the complex.

The site entrusted to the architects is complex. A protected 16th-century building stands alongside a majestic school building from 1913, while the inner square is lined with a few late 19th-century constructions to which various extensions have been added. The aim of the project was to restructure a site that had previously been confusing and impenetrable, to enhance the existing buildings on the campus, while connecting them to the project and to the adjacent urban space. This focus is immediately apparent from the various access points created by the architects. A first entrance forms the extension of the Aula Rector Dhanis, built more than twenty years ago by DMT architecten. An opening in one of the 19th-century school buildings connects the public space around the Aula Rector Dhanis and Gate15 (a building for student facilities, designed by BOB361 architecten) to the new building on the Paardenmarkt. A slightly hidden but equally well-designed entrance is located in the R building, a stack of octagonal volumes in raw concrete and dark joinery that evoke the atmosphere of the 1970s. DMT has seamlessly connected the building to the new wing. “The staircase and doors are new, but they hardly stand out in the existing building because we built them in the style of the seventies,” explains Jan Meersman with a smile. The new connection also enhances the visibility of Museum to Scale 1/7, a series of more than 100 miniature museum rooms created by as many Belgian artists on the initiative of gallery owner Ronny Van de Velde.