Last year Lex Hildebrant with his project Metro Media graduated at the Academy of Architecture and Urbanism in Tilburg. I was a year his graduation mentor. Media Metro is located in the heart of Antwerp Borgerhout. Under the busy Turnhoutsebaan is a never used metro stop opened again. The underground space and a lot at street level are transformed into an information distribution point. Media Metro is a new socio-cultural place that connects residents Borgerhout inside and outside the ring road. The project was nominated for the ArchiprixNL and Archiprix International.

More information of the project at the website of Lex Hildebrant.


(Text by Lex Hildenbrant)
Old Values ~ New Standards
‘An ode to the book as a symbol of potential and growth, a mediatized space as a platform and gateway for digital thinking, a sharing market as collective property - together a mental, programmatic and physical commitment to Borgerhout.’

MediaMetro houses physical and digital media and in doing so satisfies the local and supralocal need for a knowledge and information distribution point. Each inhabitant of Borgerhout then has access to knowledge, information, urban goods, places to work and to debate, but also a place to relax and escape the pressures of city life. This stimulates local enterprise and the development of the community and of the individual.
An entrance on the street introduces visitors to an subterranean world. The stair guides them round the MediaCube to the BiblioTube in what used to be the underground ticket hall. The BiblioTube contains a library, doubles as a transfer zone and serves as the axis connecting the MediaCube, the Sharing Market, the tube platform and the street. Here books are borrowed, shared, sold and celebrated. From the BiblioTube you can reach the MediaCube, where digital data, knowledge and information is curated and broadcast. The MediaCube operates as a maelstrom of media, people and light, its glass dome a window on the world today. The second entrance-exit leads to the Sharing Market where loan items are shared and exhibited.
Antwerp is the product of former sub-municipalities; these old cores and infrastructure still largely determine the city’s social and spatial make-up. Borgerhout is socially and spatially divided into two areas, Intramuros and Extramuros, and is dogged by sociocultural issues. The inhabitants of Extramuros are mainly older Flemings, those of Intramuros mainly younger ‘New Flemings’. Here the disunity between these population groups is immense and cultivates misunderstanding and tension. It is a place where minorities form a united front and share strong social bonds. Just this cohesion has the potential to grow into a strong spatial identity. This can result in a sense of pride and social engagement and can bring about a dynamic that can only improve the residential quality. MediaMetro stimulates and facilitates this process and offers the population groups a medium, a countenance and a mouthpiece.
The expected population growth and an increasingly multi-cultural society will bring an acute shortage of housing and sociocultural facilities. The public transport system will transform from a monocentric to a polycentric mobility network. Transformed and new nodes of a renewed dynamic and significance will emerge at the intersection of the monocentric and polycentric mobility networks. These nodes can be programmed with local and supralocal sociocultural facilities to form a full-fledged sociocultural fabric. For Borgerhout this means that a new node will emerge at the very dividing line between Intramuros and Extramuros. MediaMetro takes up a position on this node and will figure prominently in Borgerhout. The mental and physical barriers of the Ring Road, the A10 (Singel) and the railway will be breached by making use of the chance situation of there being a tube network, unused for 40 years, beneath the urban free-for-all. MediaMetro will nestle in the main station (Zegel) and use the other five stations along the 5.4 kilometre long tube line for strategic sociocultural programming. Borgerhout, Intramuros and Extramuros will have been literally and figuratively drawn together.