The Rampart, The Traffic Artery, and the Park; Designing for the city regions of Antwerp
Through a close reading of Antwerp’s current spatial and socio-economic composition, and the introduction of the interplay between the city’s three defining paradigms – abstracted to ‘The Rampart, the Traffic Artery, and the Park’ – this study tries to sketch a unifying strategy for Antwerp’s metropole. A strategy that embeds residential, economic, cultural, recreational, climatic, and historical motives within the different city regions. Thereby improving the connection between the left and right side of the river; transitioning the suburban region to a more polycentric structure while maintaining a spatial relation to the city; and explicitly manages the horizontal growth of the periphery. But that most importantly, captures the metropole in a single narrative from its inner-city to its outer edges. Graduation thesis prepared for the master’s degree in urban design at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
Through a close reading of Antwerp’s current spatial and socio-economic composition, and the introduction of the interplay between the city’s three defining paradigms – abstracted to ‘The Rampart, the Traffic Artery, and the Park’ – this study tries to sketch a unifying strategy for Antwerp’s metropole. A strategy that embeds residential, economic, cultural, recreational, climatic, and historical motives within the different city regions. Thereby improving the connection between the left and right side of the river; transitioning the suburban region to a more polycentric structure while maintaining a spatial relation to the city; and explicitly manages the horizontal growth of the periphery. But that most importantly, captures the metropole in a single narrative from its inner-city to its outer edges.
Graduation thesis prepared for the master’s degree in urban design at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
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Figure 4.15 - previous spreads
Morphology of Antwerp. The drawing
also shows the industrial buildings and
whether or not front facades are facing
the ring.
Morphology of the city districts along the ring
The previous and the following pages show a summary of the morphological
analysis done on the city districts along the ring area. The full analysis with
drawings from the individual districts can be found in appendix II.
The goal of the morphological analysis was to find the basic characteristics
of Antwerp’s morphology; its configuration of building blocks, how
squares are formed, and which proportions are used in the cross sections of
its main streets: the average street, the chaussee, the park front, and quay.
These characteristics will be used to bring a familiar quality, natural extension,
and more human-scale aspect to the subsequent densification plans of the
inner-city and suburban region along the ring zone, and the expansion of
Linkeroever, and Zwijndrecht and Burcht as part of the inner-city and suburban
region, respectively.
Figure 4.16
Conclusion of the block configurations
and the formation of squares of the
morphological analysis of the inner-city
of Antwerp.
For block configuration, we find a mixed use of four types of configurations;
organic, radial, and two types of orthogonal, one with a grid structure, and
the other with angular sides. All of these are closed building block structures,
with long narrow parcels that extend to the middle of the block, in a fashion
perpendicular to the edge of the block. Corners are solved by shortening the
parcels in an overlapping fashion.
For squares, we find three types. The first is a square formed by a
convergence of streets or different morphological patterns in which built-up
area would cause spatial or infrastructural issues. The second is a square
formed by the absence of a building block. And the third is squares defined
around an iconic building, often housing certain amenities.
Regarding sections we find that street width and building height are very closely
related to each other. For the smaller streets, like the average streets or the
small chaussee road, we find ratios of either 1 to 1 or 1 to 1,5. The building
heights along the larger roads, like the large chaussee road and the Leien, are
more often related to half the width of the street. For the park front and quay
– the sections with high-rise - we find that building heights are again related
directly related in a 1 to 1 ratio to the street width. The buildings along the
sections have an average of four to five floors, except for the high-rise along
the park and quay.
Figure 4.17
Conclusion of the sections of the
morphological analysis of the inner-city
of Antwerp.
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