EPIGONISM “Aalfs Department Store”

10 2015

KU LEUVEN Project - EPIGONISM Workshop Status - Academic Project

Location - Ghent, Belgium

Program - Commercial Mix

Site area - 400 m2

“In 1963 Alvar Van der Corbe started the design for the Department store in the corner of Sint-Niklaasstraat. It was one of the most important works of the architect as the building was located in the city centre of Ghent. At the opposite side, the Sint-Niklaas church and the Emile Braunplein were located which already attracted a lot of people. The client asked Van der Corbe to make an innovating design to captivate the people’s attention.

In 1964 the construction of the building started. At first, there was a lot of opposition against the building because of the introduction of an American habit in Ghent but also because of its radical look. Then the architect and the team made some modifications to adjust the design to the context of the city.

The building itself has an open façade on the first floor, and people can walk through the colonnade and have a look inside to get a feeling of the interior. The second floor also has openings in the façade; this makes it possible to have natural light in the building. The upper floors have a closed façade and give a huge impression. The architect chose brick to cover the façade, as brick was used a lot in the region. The columns on the façade go through to the top of the building and are made out of concrete. These columns are repeated to give some consistency to the building. The interior of the building is very different from the outside. The central aspect of the interior is the circulation, which dominates in the whole building. The escalator connected the different floors, and people could see through the atrium what was happening on the different levels.

15 years after the building was made, it was demolished because it didn’t meet the standards of the time. The exterior was too radical, and the escalator took away too much usable space. The department store also didn’t fit the fire safety regulations, and eventually, they replaced it with another design.“ By Omer Khalid Chaudhary