Kanaal is a business and residential neighborhood partly created from the conversion of industrial buildings and partly from the construction of new buildings, located in a well-to-do suburb of Antwerp. The site borders an industrial area and a canal where very large-sized river barges pass by. The client’s ambition lies in creating a new way of living within a neighborhood. The urbanistic choices made by the architects Stephan Beel and Coussée Goris led to the formation of a relatively densely grouped set of buildings, arranged in staggered rows, and separated by shared courtyards. For us, it was essential that this architectural composition did not lead to the fragmentation of the landscape. In a certain way, we proposed the introduction of an opposite set of measures: what was intended to be a network of gardened courtyards became a large landscape within which the buildings seem to have been placed.

The landscape, freed from geometric constraints and from adhering to the typology of the urban courtyard, presents a softer, more open, and more permeable matrix. Rather than worrying about the creation of a formally hierarchical composition or about an aesthetic style, we set out to define rich and complex textures from a multiplicity of elements. The park is based on the miniaturization of the veritable surrounding forests. A work of transposing to the smaller neighborhood scale therefore becomes necessary.

Indeed, if at the scale of a vast territory the coexistence of numerous plant varieties, mingling together very different textures, colors, and substances, takes on coherence, their concentration within a small space would be relatively incoherent and aesthetically shocking. The work therefore consisted in a precise botanical selection envisaging smooth transitions that would allow for the landscaped whole to remain both readable and adaptable to its usage. The sought after ornamental effect comes from this wealth of textures, and from the commitment to mastering the landscape complexity in close connection with the surrounding built environment.

Different sized trees, shrubs, ground cover, were chosen before being the subject of compositional work. The task here lay in sculpting the vegetal mass, stratum by stratum, from precise designs. The setting up of wooded areas and pathways is subtly achieved in accordance with the presence of vis-à-vis, light, views, as well as through the preservation of intimacy for the residential buildings.

Rather than follow an ordered configuration, the pathways are arranged like furtive passages that bring to mind certain forest roads. Their erosion is accepted in advance. Their completion in concrete, without clear boundary or edge, demonstrates a certain rustic character. By their very technique, they evoke more a landscape than a garden.