The Rampart, The Traffic Artery, and the Park; Designing for the city regions of Antwerp

Figure 1.21
The masterplan of De Heem and
Vanaverbeke from 1934 (De Klauw,
2016).
the Scheldt, visible in the north-eastern section of Linkeroever. Burying parts
of Linkeroever’s now redundant defensive structure. As a side effect of these
events, the northern side developed into a popular recreational spot; the Sint
Anna beach. A beach that is still used today. In the wake of the urbanisation,
Imalso started to construct two tunnels that would connect both sides of the
river; The Waaslandtunnel and the Sint-Annatunnel, an automobile and pedestrian
tunnel respectively. The former connected to the Tunnellaan, a road that
connect to the northern side of the Leien, and via a diagonal to Zwijndrecht.
De pedestrian tunnel connects to Fort Vlaamsch Hoofd. The tunnels opened
in 1933. During the construction of the tunnels, the city launched an international
design competition for the development of Linkeroever as a city district.
Several heavy weights took part in the competition, like Le Corbusier. Large
utopian plans were submitted, as stimulated by the city itself. No first prize
was ever issued. Instead the architects De Heem and Vanaverbeke unofficially
developed a plan for the district that would be (partially) executed after World
War II. As was fashionable at the time, their plan was largely inspired by modernistic
principles, with large green boulevard for cars (Schoofs, 2003a).
Figure 1.22
A map of Antwerp around 1952 (Cartesius.be,
b; Topotijdreis, n.d.).
1952
The map to the left shows Antwerp after the Second World War. We see that
the Grote Omwalling is starting to get dismantled. Along the northern section
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