Maxwan a+u, Karres & Brands, 1010 & Goudappel Coffeng Awarded for Park Ruggeveld

The design for the park Ruggeveld – Botelaar-Silsburg, a joint effort by Maxwan, Karres & Brands, 1010 & Goudappel Coffeng, has won the prestigious biannual Flemish Spatial Planning Prize for the most innovative and exciting initiative on environmental quality and sustainable spatial development.

The ambition for the Ruggeveld - Boterlaar-Silsburg Park is to develop an urban / sports / recreation / nature / park with a strong identity, in the edge of the city of Antwerp, Belgium.

The main task is to combine the recreational needs of Antwerp and Deurne with ecological functions of the Groot Schijn and Koude Beek valleys.

The masterplan offers a patchwork of diverse activities and atmosphere: while Botelaar-Silsburg retains its local character, Ruggeveld’s sports park is designed to attract people at a regional level.

Our vision offers answers to three major questions:

• How to unify Ruggeveld and Botelaar-Silsburg into one coherent space with strongconnections to the surrounding parks and streets;
• How to reveal the existing ecological assets of the two valleys - Groot Schijn and Koude Beek – and transform them into a prominent feature of the park;
• How to resolve the fragmented nature of the site into a prominently recognizable identity.

Therefore, the masterplan introduces the principle of the ‘seams’. For the entire site, the seams act as an organizing structure to define open spaces and form a network connecting the various program elements in the park such as soccer fields and youth clubs.

Finally, the seams are materialized with grass, trees and bending paths to offer a pleasant park experience. They radiate out to the edges of the park to form entrances and also to complement the characters of the surrounding streets.