The scope of this graduation project is to design a new building for Antwerp’s Museum of contemporary art (M HKA). A building that can accommodate the museum’s ambitions following the transition from the M HKA to the Flemish Museum of contemporary art (VMHK). The museum has been appointed a location in Antwerp South for its new building and has released a program with its requirements, which has been used as a basis for this project.

Museums are complicated buildings. In order to be able to design such a building, it is necessary to gain a thorough understanding of its environment: the city of Antwerp, and more specifically the museum’s location, the typology of the museum of contemporary art, and of the M HKA itself: its rich history, the type of museum it currently is and its ambitions to become the VMHK.

In its brief, the client describes a desire for an atmosphere of both ‘industrial roughness and domestic intimacy’, as well as it being a ‘robust skeleton and a
volatile space of experimentation’. This notwithstanding, the architecture should
also be sustainable, in a broad sense: in its use of materials, in the use of
existing subsoil (parts), but mostly it should be adaptable to future, different use.