新建筑取代了以前占据整个基地的一组现代主义建筑群，现已无法适应当今的可持续发展标准。

由于安特卫普市中心几乎没有公共绿地，因此将场地从一个硬质基础设施建设用地改造成一个公共花园。

这片土地被零散的公共绿地所包围，形成了一个更大且连贯的公园。但另一个矛盾是保留的代表性展馆成为了绿地间的障碍。

The new building replaces a complex of modernist building volumes that used to occupy the entire site and could not be adapted to today’s sustainability standards. As the Antwerp city centre has few public green surfaces, the transformation of the site from a merely private, mineral, and infrastructural area into a public garden is a crucial requirement of the competition brief. Surrounded by fragments of public green, the parcel is key to the formation of a larger, coherent park. Another – contradictory - demand was to maintain a more recent representational pavilion, which was positioned as an obstacle in between the fragments.