Across Europe, many cities are focusing on redeveloping their post-industrial heritage to integrate it within the fabric of the city. Post-industrial urbanism, focused on revival of vacant and contaminated sites, requires a clear vision in order to create projects that aim at integrated development, creating attractive new public realm promoting urban inclusion.
Renowned for its internationally important harbor and center for diamond trade, Antwerp is the second largest city in Belgium. The city government, through its new urban policies, aims to make Antwerp ‘the most attractive environment to live, work and visit’. This ambition is in line with their desire to position the city in terms of ‘sustainable and cultural competitiveness’ in the world. With a focus on spatial planning and city renewal, different projects have been realized on different scales to regenerate various neighborhoods. Public spaces have been introduced to bring the city close to nature, developing safer public realms and providing new public infrastructure.
A place to showcase identity and meet the needs, Spoor Noord is one such project, which transforms a dysfunctional railway yard into a new urban park. The park is an old railway yard located between the port and old residential districts and 20th century urban ring, which created an enormous barrier among the neighborhoods. In the year 2000, the railways abandoned the yard, creating the possibility to develop it as an open space for the high-density neighborhoods around it.
The railways, built in the 19th Century, became a large infrastructural barrier within the city and its northern neighborhoods. In the later 20th century, the shifting of the port and industries northward led to the gradual decline of the neighborhoods around these areas. The project was part of the larger city policy, implemented towards strategic renewal of the city’s northern edge.
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Spoor Noord is part of the city structure plan policy, prepared by designer Studio Secchi-Vigano for the redevelopment of the disused railway yard in the north of Antwerp. It forms an important part of the city level soft spine, with an emphasis on consistent landscape and ecological systems.
A part of a larger integrated park system, the park is designed to provide a continuous space to different parts of the city for improved living quality in various neglected neighborhoods. Intended to make north Antwerp a lively place, the project focuses on improving connections to the city, promoting social cohesion and improving the quality of life.
Located between the port, residential districts and the 20th century urban ring, Spoor Noord includes the neighborhoods of Antwerpen Dam, Stuivenberg and Seefhoek. These are dense residential areas with little public green space and a complex community of immigrants, suffering from issues of social deprivation and isolation from the rest of the city.
The urban park becomes the most important part of the project to initiate the process of revival, facilitate social inclusion and further development. The park as a green public space provides a breathing space to the adjoining dense residential area. The park is seen as a free social space, which is open to all communities and neighborhoods; it helps them make connections with each other as well as with the city. The park thus should not be seen as a standalone space, but a part of the neighborhoods, as their public activities extend into the park.
THE DESIGN SCENARIO
Bernardo Secchi and Paola Vigano along with Buro Kromwijk and Iris Consulting won the competition for Spoor Noord in 2003. As per the agreement between the city and the railway company (NMBS), it was decided that 18 ha. of total area would be developed as a landscape park with facilities for recreation, sports and the remaining 6 ha. would be developed by NMBS as ‘Kop Spoor Noord’.
To maintain and preserve the heritage of the site, old railway buildings are incorporated into the design and transformed for contemporary use.
It includes Parkloods, the platform, the former railway staff’s education building and the water towers. The Parkloods, earlier known as WDT hangars, is situated at the center of the park. It is transformed into a multifunctional space with facilities for exhibition, an office for logistics and a newly built sports center. The earlier SPTM hangar, now the platform, is one of Belgium’s oldest railway buildings and was maintained as a covered space, to hold different functions. The 19th century educational building is transformed to house an art school, child care center and a youth center. The railway platform in the park is one of the oldest railway stations in Belgium. Built in 1886, it has been preserved as covered open space and has the ‘flexibility’ to host various activities. The preserved water towers mark the eastern entrance of the park. The reuse of the buildings along with new landscape creates a new atmosphere connected to the site.
Kop Spoor Noord is the top western part of the site to be developed as a new campus of a university, housing, offices, hospitality, public and commercial spaces. The aim is to use the project to revive the area of North Antwerp, with long-term effects and bring a new identity to the area, which was missing from the map of the city. To make the park sustainable, many choices have been made, which includes the reuse of railway material, integration of railway buildings, preference for indigenous plants and use of wadis for collecting rainwater for internal water management. Buildings with large roofs can be used to generate solar energy to make the project self-sufficient.
EXPERIENCING THE PARK
The park is conceived as a multi-layered flexible space, where the public feels free to use the space in different ways. While taking a walk through the park, you can have different experiences in the form of sand gardens, water towers, undulating paths and sports clusters. The main cycling and walking trail follow the old track line, representing the spine of the park with traces of history. There are various other accessibility points to the park from several directions with a provision for parking. The park is also used for organizing many temporary markets throughout the year especially during festivals. There are layers of different open green spaces: playfields, skate bowl, gardens, a gymnasium and recreational buildings such as cafes, restaurants, exhibition spaces and other built developments like an office, a school and a hospital.
There are spaces which can be used in different seasons at varied points of time by users of all age groups, keeping the park lively and busy all the time. The park is seen as a continuous green space with a simple design, a curvy cobblestone boulevard marking the spine of the park. A network of paths intersects the field of grass and connects different neighborhoods. The historical elements provided robust sustainable choices to the layout of the park such as preserving the existing terrain and reusing the railway yard materials such as viaducts and buildings.
A lot of onsite material was reused for the pathways and plazas. A few buildings were preserved and integrated into the landscape.
A park at the city scale, Spoor Noord also provides a garden, a part of everyday life, to the densely built neighborhoods lacking open spaces. The large open continuous terrain of the park brings different parts of the city together, which were once divided over the railway barrier. It’s a flexible and dynamic space, which is expected to adapt and change according to the needs of changing generations.
Participation of citizens was an important component in the planning and design of the project. Many events and debates were organized, at different planning stages, involving citizens. The entire project was designed in different phases, opening a completed part to the public after each phase, to keep people interested and involved.
Though there have been many cities that have invested in large parks as urban development projects, The Spoor Noord was a first for Antwerp, a park as an instigator of urban development. With the growth of metropolitan cities, there is more and more pressure on open public spaces, leading to their continuous shrinkage. Granting a new function to this redundant industrial heritage as a public space was a much-needed response to this scenario. These public spaces become important elements of a vibrant and livable contemporary city. With the Spoor Noord, the city embraced the change of an era in a most striking way, by making space for their contemporary needs while still preserving its history.
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