Il palazzo ritrovato: il progetto di rinnovo della stazione di Antwerpen Centraal

Ever since they were first built in the nineteenth century, railway stations have always been the symbol of the new city, the image that summarizes the very essence of Modernity based on the nature of the place and its ties to other places. In reference to the transition, in the city, from Modernity related to the first Industrial Revolution to the Modernity of our day, tied to the High-Speed networks, the authors first allude to the symbolic values of the historic Antwerpen Centraal railway station, relying on the interpretation given by German writer Winfried G. Sebald. This reading is followed by the images of the project and on-site renovation work at the station, accompanied by photographs of the interior spaces and the exterior volumes. These documents clearly highlight the meaning and the quality of the work that is being done, which had more than one objective: to intervene on the historic building to emphasize its ample volumes and introduce Modernity into the station, as place, based on networks and numerical exchanges; to propose a dialogue between the historic building and the new construction, which would cancel the old image of the Antwerpen Centraal station as the decadent symbol of outdated Modernity; and finally to create a new tunnel that connects the various parts of the city, and to give greater porosity, at the district scale, to the flyover over the railroad tracks leading to the station.