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

an interplay between the second and third paradigm, only this time the traffic
artery is filled in by transport modes that are less disruptive. A connection to
the first paradigm, the rampart, seems to not be consciously established in
the design of the ring park. Looking at the previous historical morphological
analysis we can distinguish a structure in the urban fabric of Antwerp that has
qualities of all three of these paradigms: the Leien.
In the transition from the Spaanse Omwalling to the Grote Omwalling,
the massive leftover space was used to build a major traffic artery
through the city; the present-day Leien. In its construction the rough shape of
the former rampart was petrified in the urban fabric of the city, as illustrated
by the drawing on the left page. In addition to this, the shape of the lunette of
Herentals was preserved in the urban fabric as the current city park, and the
Leien were decorated by several rows of trees. In this structure we find an intricate
interaction between the first, second, and third paradigm. We find that the
spirit of the Spaanse Omwalling lives on not just in the morphological shape
of the Leien and the city park, but also the rows of trees that are planted on the
boulevard, which remind us of the trees planted on the Omwalling in the 16th
century. While the average passer-by will probably not link these trees back to
the Spaanse Omwalling, one of its elements is nonetheless contributing to the
creation of a more pleasant atmosphere on the boulevard itself. It is perhaps
even what keeps it from turning into a space meant purely for movement, as
we have seen in the current ring zone.
This interaction between the three paradigms in the way we have seen in the
Leien; that an element of one of the paradigms is used to solve a problem,
or improve the spatial quality of one of the paradigms, might be a very useful
Figure 1.31
A painting of the Spaanse Omwalling
by J. Hoenagel in 1598. The painting
shows the rows of trees that have
been planted on the rampart. Why
these trees have been planted on the
ramparts is not entirely clear, perhaps
because of some recreational quality
(Follens, 2019).
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