Impact Factory
A new HUB for creative activities
Impact Factory
A new HUB for creative activities
Year: 2022
Status: Competition
Program: Socio-cultural equipment
Location: Mechelen, Belgium
Budget: 4.400.000 exc. VAT
Surface: 4000 m²
Collaboration: Bob Mc Master
Client: Stad Mechelen / Miss Miyagi
Stability: Robuust
HVAC: Gevelinzicht
Energy: Gevelinzicht
Acoustics: De Fonseca
The question was to transform and connect existing buildings (one being an office building, the other one a former small industrial workshop), and transform the whole site, located in the city fabric of Mechelen, in a kind of complex and imbricated way, mostly open towards the back façades into a new hub for creative activities (including offices, workshops, but also exhibition spaces, coffee,…) for the city. The aim was to work in a circular way.
With Bob Mc Master and the whole team of engineers, we organized and transformed the existing buildings around the “empty plot”, that we transformed into an inner garden, an outdoor and qualitative space to activate, to look at, to open to the neighborhood. We felt that the whole site was dense and built enough and that a qualitative outdoor space was the missing link. How to be more circular than not to build more that what is already there ?