© Stijn Bollaert
- Architects: TRANS architectuur I stedenbouw
- Location: Koningsdal 24, 9000 Gent, Belgium
- Collaborators: Micconsult, UTIL
- Area: 2000.0 ft2
- Project Year: 2018
- Photographs: Stijn Bollaert, Annelies Vanstockstraeten
© Stijn Bollaert
Text description provided by the architects. After decades of gradual expansion, the factory buildings of Ryhove, a company based in the city centre of Ghent, showed signs of decay. The corporate image had become one of an outdated working environment that was no longer in line with the commercial success.
© Stijn Bollaert
The company had two options: to leave the site for an efficient new construction in a peripheral industrial zone or to take on the challenge to partially demolish the factory and to rebuild it on the same site.
Lower Floor Plan
The choice was made to stay at the site, so the employees could continue to work in their neighbourhood.
The new building restructures the site and organizes the logistics in an efficient way. Additional factory space and an underground parking were built.
© Stijn Bollaert
An important ambition was to make the industrial expansion acceptable in a residential area. That is why the ‘terraced house typology’ was chosen as a reference for the intervention. The street façade was divided into parts with a width of approx. 5 m. The building got a simple pitched roof.
Upper Floor Plan
Around the corner, the roof is tripled. A loading and unloading area is organized in the middle of site: the handling of the goods is not hidden but placed in the heart of the factory.
© Stijn Bollaert
The building is made with standardized, prefabricated elements. Concrete columns, CLT panels and metal sandwich elements were assembled to make a construction with a character that oscillates between an urban and peripheral building.