An older man, a building developer, came to our office with  a project proposal in Antwerp, Belgium.  He exclaimed that throughout his career, he had made many projects - developed land, built towers, shops, houses, infrastructure, and so forth - but had never once made anything beautiful.  
The project required a mixed use tower - with retail spaces on the floors below, and residential spaces on the floors above.  This project would sit at the Northern edge of a larger development complex, which the Belgian development team was working on.  Building off of their requirements, our proposal consisted of a quadrangular ring of retail spaces circumscribing a glass serpentine residential tower.  The tower would be lifted off the ground, allowing a garden to flourish within the ring and tower’s negative space.  This creates a transitional area between the retail and residential spaces and grants an alternative to the view of the city.
To arrive at this design conclusion, a 1:500 scale model was commissioned to understand the building in context with the site, and the site in context with the city - both man made and natural.  The model you see before you is the result.  This model took two people three weeks to make, two of which were solely spent cutting and sanding bricks.  The dark red bricks used in the model were specially imported to our office, but are a commonly used local brick from Belgium.  They are porous, making them difficult to dry and very brittle along the edges. Yet, the brick’s beefy mineral composition - containing chunks of iron and silica - made sanding and slicing hard on the machines.  These minerals would quickly ware down sanding disks and shear band saw teeth.  Special stone cutting tools and saws had to be bought  to cut and form this material accurately.  The final result was a model of rustic simplicity and elegant power. 

Project Location: Antwerp, Belgium

​Project Type: Mixed Use - Multifamily and Commercial

​Project Year: 2017-Current

​Status: Concept Design​