Category Libraries
Location Drongen
Year 2021
Client City of Ghent
Role Architect, conversion
Status Handed over
The grain store had stood empty since 1998 and the floor slabs were sound, so the work was mostly subtraction: we cut a stair well through three floors, opened the river elevation with one long window per bay, and left the concrete frame as we found it. The archive occupies the lowest floor, where the temperature swings least, behind a wall of steel shelving that the parish moved itself over two weekends. Ten thousand volumes sit above it. The only new material on the outside is the zinc parapet, which is deliberate.
