© Helene Binet

• Architects: Zaha Hadid Architects
• Location: Antwerp, Belgium
• Design: Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher
• Area: 12800.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Helene Binet, Hufton+Crow, Tim Fischer

• Zha Project Director: Joris Pauwels
• Zha Project Architect: Jinmi Lee
• Zha Project Team: Florian Goscheff, Monica Noguero, Kristof Crolla, Naomi Fritz, Sandra Riess, Muriel Boselli, Susanne Lettau
• Zha Competition Team: Kristof Crolla, Sebastien Delagrange, Paulo Flores, Jimena Araiza, Sofia Daniilidou, Andres Schenker, Evan Erlebacher, Lulu Aldihani
• Executive Architect: Bureau Bouwtechniek
• Structural Engineers: Studieburo Mouton Bvba
• Services Engineers: Ingenium Nv
• Acoustic Engineers: Daidalos Peutz
• Restoration Consultants: Origin
• Fire Protection: Fpc

© Hufton+Crow

From the architect. The new Port House in Antwerp repurposes, renovates and extends a derelict fire station into a new headquarters for the port – bringing together the port’s 500 staff that previously worked in separate buildings around the city. 

© Helene Binet

With 12 km of docks, Antwerp is Europe’s second largest shipping port, serving 15,000 sea trade ships and 60,000 inland barges each year.

© Hufton+Crow

 Antwerp handles 26% of Europe’s container shipping, transporting more than 200 million tonnes of goods via the ocean-going vessels that call at the port and providing direct employment for over 60,000 people, including more than 8,000 port workers. Indirectly, the Port of Antwerp ensures about 150,000 jobs and has ambitious targets for future expansion to meet the continent’s growth and development over the next century.

© Hufton+Crow

 In 2007, when the former 1990s offices of the Port of Antwerp had become too small, the port determined that relocation would enable its technical and administrative services to be housed together, providing new accommodation for about 500 staff. The port required a sustainable and future-proof workplace for its employees, representing its ethos and values in an ever-expanding local and international arena.

© Tim Fischer

 As the threshold between the city and its vast port, Mexico Island in Antwerp’s Kattendijk dock on Quay 63 was selected as the site for the new head office. The waterside site also offered significant sustainable construction benefits, allowing materials and building components to be transported by water, an important requirement to meet the port’s ecological targets.

© Hufton+Crow

Following the construction of a new fire station with facilities needed to service the expanding port, the old fire station on the Mexico Island site – a listed replica of a Hanseatic residence – became redundant and relied on a change of use to ensure its preservation.  This disused fire station had to be integrated into the new project. The Flemish government’s department of architecture, together with the City and Port authorities organized the architectural competition for the new headquarters.

© Hufton+Crow

Zaha Hadid Architects’ design is informed by detailed historical research and a thorough analysis of both the site and the existing building.

Long Section

Marc Van Peel, president of the Port of Antwerp, said: “There was only one rule laid down in the architectural competition, namely that the original building had to be preserved. There were no other requirements imposed for the positioning of the new building. The jury was therefore pleasantly surprised when the five shortlisted candidates all opted for a modern structure above the original building. They all combined the new with the old, but the design by Zaha Hadid Architects was the most brilliant.”

© Hufton+Crow

Working with Origin, leading heritage consultants in the restoration and renovation of historic monuments, ZHA’s studies of the site’s history and heritage are the foundations of the design which firstly emphasises the north-south site axis parallel with the Kattendijkdok linking the city centre to the port. Secondly, due to its location surrounded by water, the building’s four elevations are considered of equal importance with no principal facade.  ZHA’s design is an elevated extension, rather than a neighbouring volume which would have concealed at least one of the existing facades. ZHA and Origin’s historic analysis of the old fire station also highlighted the role of its originally intended tower – a grand, imposing component of the fire station’s Hanseatic design. Its bold vertical statement, intended to crown the imposing volume of the building below, was never realised.

Level 0 Floor Plan

These three key principles define the design’s composition of new and old: a new volume that ‘floats’ above the old building, respecting each of the old facades and completing the verticality of the original design’s unrealised tower.

© Hufton+Crow

Like the bow of a ship, the new extension points towards the Scheldt, connecting the building with the river on which Antwerp was founded.

© Tim Fischer

Surrounded by water, the new extension’s façade is a glazed surface that ripples like waves and reflects the changing tones and colours of the city’s sky. Triangular facets allow the apparently smooth curves at either end of the building to be formed with flat sheets of glass. They also facilitate the gradual transition from a flat façade at the south end of the building to a rippling surface at the north.

© Hufton+Crow

While most of the triangular facets are transparent, some are opaque. This calibrated mix ensures sufficient sunlight within the building, while also controlling solar load to guarantee optimal working conditions. At the same time, the alternation of transparent and opaque facade panels breaks down the volume of the new extension, giving panoramic views of the Scheldt, the city and the Port as well as providing enclosure.

© Helene Binet

The façade’s rippling quality is generated with flat facets to the south that gradually become more three-dimensional towards to the north. This perception of a transparent volume, cut to give the new building its sparkling appearance, reinterprets Antwerp’s moniker as the city of diamonds. The new extension appears as a carefully cut form which changes its appearance with the shifting intensity of daylight. Like the ripples on the surface of the water in the surrounding port, the new façade reflects changing light conditions.

© Hufton+Crow

The old fire station’s central courtyard has been enclosed with a glass roof and is transformed into the main reception area for the new Port House. From this central atrium, visitors access the historic public reading room and library within the disused fire truck hall which has been carefully restored and preserved. Panoramic lifts provide direct access to the new extension with an external bridge between the existing building and new extension giving panoramic views of the city and port.

© Tim Fischer

The client requirements for an ‘activity based office’ are integrated within the design, with related areas such as the restaurant, meeting rooms and auditorium located at the centre of the upper levels of the existing building and the bottom floors of the new extension. The remaining floors more remote from the centre, comprise open plan offices.

Level 6 Floor Plan

Collaborating with services consultant Ingenium, ZHA developed a sustainable and energy-efficient design reaching a ‘Very Good’ BREEAM environmental rating. Despite the challenges of integrating with a protected historic building, high standards in sustainable design were achieved by implementing effective strategies at each stage of construction. A borehole energy system pumps water to a depth of 80m below grade in over 100 locations around the building to provide heating and cooling. In the existing building, this system uses chilled beams. In the new extension, it uses chilled ceilings. Waterless lavatory fittings and motion detectors minimise water consumption while building automation and optimal daylight controls minimise artificial lighting.

© Hufton+Crow

© Tim Fischer

With constant references to the Scheldt, the city of Antwerp and the dynamics of its port, married with the successful renovation and reuse of a redundant fire station – integrating it as a fully-fledged part of its headquarters – the new Port House will serve the port well through its planned expansion over future generations.

© Tim Fischer

Marc Van Peel said: “The architectural style of the original building, a replica of the former Hansa House, recalls the 16th century, Antwerp’s “golden century.” But now above this original, a contemporary structure in shining glass has been built, which I am sure, represents a new golden century for Antwerp.”

© Helene Binet

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via PABTcompetition.com

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has revealed the five finalists teams in competition to redesign the Port Authority bus terminal in west Manhattan: Arcadis of New York, Archilier Architecture Consortium, Hudson Terminal Center Collaborative, Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, and Perkins Eastman.

The Port Authority Bus Terminal International Design + Deliverability Competition challenged architects to reimagine the current terminal building, built in 1950 and expanded in 1979, for the demands of modernday ridership. The terminal currently accommodates approximately 220,000 passenger trips and more than 7,000 bus movements on an average weekday, with demand projected to increase to 270,000 daily peak-hour passengers by 2020, and as many as 337,000 daily peak-hour passengers by 2040.

Continue reading to see each of the designs.

Arcadis of New York

The proposed design solution considers four themes in response to the interests of multiple constituencies for the Port Authority Bus Terminal: Purposeful Design, Certainty of Results, Encompassing Vision and Regional Connectivity. These themes establish a basis that challenges conventional assumptions about the Bus Terminal in order to enhance terminal operations while mitigating any potential negative impact on the community.

Archilier Architecture Consortium

In our design proposal for a new midtown bus terminal, Archilier Architecture and its team have created a new civic landmark that urbanistically knits together historic Hell’s Kitchen and the emerging Hudson Yards district, replacing what is now a ‘no-man’s-land’ with a vibrant multi-faceted public facility as part of a long-range master plan that heals what has been an open scar on the face of New York’s west side. This terminal will be New York’s “Next Great Place”.

Hudson Terminal Center Collaborative

The Hudson Terminal Center (HTC) Collaborative has developed an extraordinary approach for reinventing the Port Authority Bus Terminal (PABT), one that can bring about a transformative impact on the quality of life in Midtown West. Our innovative concept places a new terminal directly below the PABT site – as an underground facility – with seamless, naturally lit connections to adjacent city streets and subways. This innovative scheme will provide the potential for private equity development on the PABT site, as well as on nearby PANYNJ parcels that are currently occupied by the terminal’s existing bus and private auto ramp infrastructure.

Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects

Welcome to Times Square West, a new district that redefines the southern edge of Clinton and connects the emerging neighborhood of Hudson Yards with the iconic office, cultural and tourist destination of Times Square. Designed around a new Transit Center west of 9th Avenue, Times Square West marks the next phase in the area’s evolution from a maritime community to a vibrant residential, cultural and commercial one. By relocating and downsizing the bus terminal and repairing the urban fabric severed by its ramps and tunnel approaches, Times Square West reintroduces mobility and human scale to this midtown neighborhood after a half century without them.

Perkins Eastman

The “Convergence” design vision for the new Port Authority Bus Terminal (PABT) leverages every single aspect of transit infrastructure, above and below ground, in order to create an iconic place in the City where people will want to live, work and visit, regardless of whether they are using any form of transit.

Key features of the Convergence design plan include:

• Transform Jacob Javits Convention Center into the ideal site locale
• Buses, trucks and ramps are removed entirely from the local street network, allowing greater permeability of surface streets for cars and pedestrians
• Integrate the Terminal with new Number 7 Hudson Yards station for direct access
• Introduce resilient transit infrastructure that doubles as a new public waterfront park
• No eminent domain and a flexible “as-of-right” process
• Keep normal operations going throughout the construction process

For more information on the competition and the five finalists, visit the competition site, here.

News via The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

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