#theantwerp13

[ldpdesign]

Gallery tour

[ldpdesign]

The classic Antwerp view on a sunny day.

[ldpdesign]

entrance to the arena

[ldpdesign]

a clear day

[ldpdesign]

the first skyscraper built in Europe.

[ldpdesign]

Here a typical rooftop – Staircases for pigeons, I would say.

Antwerp has a multi-layered history but is not afraid of modernity, a hub for makers and thinkers with the coziness of home. A happy village nurturing its soul through the slow sedimentation of boutique creativity and hyper-locality.

Rows of ‘Toy Houses’ frame the narrow roads which barely allow the sun to be seen. Few rays instead bounce from one glass window to another playing hide and seek. Pale marks of time and soft light on the aged bricks and the postmodernist cement. Games of shadows intertwine with the beautifully crafted gothic textures of ancient churches and residential buildings, survivors of WW2 bombings. In the city center, you can perceive the city’s true character.

An innate creativity exhaling within the smallest details such as colorful tiny doors or by peaking at large apartment windows which frame the widest variety of exotic plants, signs of a colonial past. Products were imported from remote lands all the way down to the old port, a place tinted with yellow (banana import) and shine (diamonds).

[ldpdesign]

Zaha Hadid in Antwerp Harbour

[ldpdesign]

By the harbor, the city is slowly expanding and allows modernity to blend in with tradition. Here a rusty old structure signaling an old fish market.

Zaha Hadid structures are being glued to historical buildings like an healing prosthesis to an old man’s hip. The colorful containers walk you by the small canals and reflect the need for positive energy this city always tries to bring out.

The legend of the giant and the hand is thrown in the river makes this experience even more like a fairytale.