Development Diamond In The Sky

Zaha Hadid Architects blends the historic and the futuristic for the Antwerp Port Authority’s new headquarters.

- Giovanna Dunmall

Zaha Hadid’s second posthumous project to be completed (after the oyster-shaped Maritime Terminal in Salerno, Italy, this past April) is the Port House in the Belgian city of Antwerp. Composed of a restored early–20th century fire station with a new 364-foot-long glazed structure above it, the building overlooks both port and city, and shimmers as if in motion, an effect amplified by a massive angled concrete “leg” and cantilever at one end, and faceted triangular glass panels on the other.

Does the crystalline shape reference Antwerp’s diamond trade? And is its angular nose a ship’s bow and a nod to the city’s maritime past and present? According to project director Joris Pauwels, a senior associate at Zaha Hadid Architects, “all these connotations are there,” but for the practice “the shape of the volume is more to do with how it reacts to the external context, the way it opens up toward the city, and how you see it from a distance and perceive it as you arrive on the site.”