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Client(s)DCA, BESIX RED, Vanhout Projects
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Construction siteMechelen
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Architect teamJasper De Roover
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Year2017
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StatusCompetition
The site around the former Eandis location and the adjacent Rode Kruisplein with Keerdok are part of an industrial site that is still partly in use around the historic monument the Ouwen dock. The project comprises three subareas (Eandistip, Rode Kruisplein and Keerdok), each of which maintains a relationship with the river Dyle, and whose recognisability and natural quality are central to the design.
The site is currently undergoing a transformation in which the historic monument de Ouwen dok, the former swimming dock, is being reconverted to serve as a hotel. It is this function that has the intrinsic capacity to act as a flywheel investment. It will recharge the entire project area and act as a catalyst between the newly designed Eandistip car park and the residential building on the Rode Kruisplein, later called the Belvedere building.
The Eandistip building stands resolutely in the river landscape and marks this place as the northern entrance to Mechelen. If, in the future, the park is also constructed at the point at which the Dyle forks, both the wide and rich range of public spaces and the continuous bank will be realised.
The new connections in the form of a car, bicycle and pedestrian bridge will provide the necessary transhipment on the Dyle and will greatly increase the entire and necessary accessibility of the area. The interventions we carry out remain very close to the DNA of the place: involving a quay, a square and a riverbank landscape. We will only improve and make what is already there more readable and pay attention to the qualities we find in order to do justice to the history of the place, its ‘genius loci’.
The structural basis of the urban development vision was previously worked out by the BUUR and Mint agencies and established in a definitive master plan. The various building plots and urban development parameters are laid down as a run-up to a spatial implementation plan that is yet to be determined.
