© Ulrich Schwarz
In the plinth storeys: shops, restaurants and offices. On the floors above, removed from the housing density of suburbia: dwellings that convey a sense of living in a bungalow in verdant surroundings. Spacious external realms and an optimized access system help create more than just a mundane housing and commercial block in Antwerp’s new urban extension Nieuw Zuid. The architects and building clients refer to this scheme as an “urban palace for the 21st century”.