Bridging the Archive
weaving a public landscape into de Singel
Y. Li (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
D.J. Rosbottom – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
S. Pietsch – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
E. Karanastasi – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
S.S. Mandias – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
V. Danivska – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
The Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi) has outgrown its current spaces within de Singel, Antwerp's modernist arts complex. Simultaneously, de Singel itself suffers from poor accessibility, fragmented circulation, and severed landscape connections due to Ring Road infrastructure. This graduation project proposes an integrated solution operating at different scales. A landscape bridge reconnects fragmented green spaces across the highway, creating ecological corridors and establishing a walking network that extends the archive into the city's modernist landmarks. A new VAi building with a transparent ground floor transforms de Singel's into a welcoming public threshold. The design embraces permeability and connectivity as a core principle. By transforming the highway barrier from urban wound into landscape infrastructure, the project gives the VAi a contemporary public identity while completing Leon Stynen's interrupted vision of de Singel as a building embedded in nature. It demonstrates how cultural institutions can actively contribute to urban healing and ecological restoration.