Port House architecture not only serves the area of Antwerp pier but also became the focus of European architecture by architectural style. The Port House is located on a building in the Antwerp harbor, designed by the Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA).
The Port House is shaped like a giant diamond in the air, highlighting a landscape of the Antwerp harbor, the North Sea and the Scheldt estuary in Belgium.
The 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. 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.
Before being built on the historic harbor, Port House has been carefully calculated on the historical value, origin, quality, strength of the geological structure and has been consulted very Many architectural consulting firms make the final decision safe, quality and best suited to the general landscape.
Seen in detail, the Port House is made of a metal-alloy, metal-framed, iron-plated metal frame, and is designed in a polygonal polygonal shape that resembles a ship. The iron bars are assembled together to form many strange strips. The purpose is to increase linkage, to sustain the building, and to create a common space.
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.
Like the bow of a ship, the new extension points towards the Scheldt, connecting the building with the river on which Antwerp was founded.
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.
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.
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.