Experience

ANTWERP | New-build Technical Cluster North ready at the end of 2027

Posted by Timothy on

On the Havana site in the north of Antwerp, the City of Antwerp is constructing a new logistics centre. In the future, this large energy-neutral building will become the base of operations for 600 employees from various municipal operational services. It is scheduled to be taken into use at the end of 2027, if everything goes according to plan.

To guarantee high-quality service delivery, the city is centralising a large part of its northern operational services on one large site on Havanastraat. The site lies in the zone between the park-and-ride facility and the recycling park.

This so-called Technical Cluster North consists of offices, indoor and outdoor storage areas, a vehicle centre, changing rooms and other supporting functions, as well as parking facilities. The entire site covers almost 60,000 m².

Services

The new building will meet the functional and technical requirements of its various users and their activities:

  • The city cleaning service, responsible for waste collection and keeping the streets clean.
  • The green maintenance service, which manages the city’s green spaces.
  • The vehicle centre, which repairs and maintains the city’s fleet.
  • The pest control service.
  • The events equipment service.
  • The street and square maintenance division of the city development department

Alderman Ken Casier (NVA), responsible for Public Space, Green Spaces, City Cleaning and Waste: “With this new site, our city cleaning teams get a sustainable and innovative base. Technical Cluster North, with its 60,000 m² surface area, will be a place where 366 vehicles and hundreds of employees can work together comfortably to keep Antwerp clean, green and liveable. This is innovation in the service of people.”

Functional building

The building will offer city employees a pleasant working environment. Large, tall windows and a shallow office wing ensure plenty of daylight and an enjoyable view outside. In the warehouses and workshops too, windows, glazed doors and skylights provide abundant natural light.

Noise-sensitive spaces, such as offices, have been grouped together and separated from noise-producing spaces like the vehicle centre.

The intention is to create a flexible building that can easily adapt to future needs. It therefore includes, among other things, a large column-free warehouse, high storey heights in the office wing and changing rooms, and shared spaces such as the canteen.

Sustainable building

The sustainable new-build Technical Cluster North will be fossil-free and energy-neutral:

  • A very compact and well-insulated building envelope ensures low energy consumption. To reduce heat loss, heated rooms with the same temperature adjoin one another. Offices, changing rooms and shared facilities are housed in a passive building block.
  • A geothermal heat pump provides cooling in summer and heating from local renewable energy, combined with a connection to the city’s district heating network.
  • 2,675 m² of solar panels on the roof provide enough energy for the building’s entire energy demand.
  • Energy-efficient LED lighting has been chosen, combined with automatic occupancy detection.
  • Maximum reuse of rainwater is prioritised. All hardened roof surfaces are connected to rainwater recovery tanks. The collected rainwater is used for the sanitary facilities, the green maintenance service and vehicle cleaning.
  • Where possible, a circular construction system has been applied, allowing materials to be easily dismantled and reused — for example, mechanical fixings instead of adhesives.

Alderman for Property and chair of AG Vespa, Koen Kennis (N-VA): “With Technical Cluster North, we are building an ambitious new chapter for our city: a site built on 879 foundation piles, a water buffer larger than an Olympic swimming pool, 2,675 m² of solar panels and 18,000 tonnes of recycled concrete rubble. This is not just another construction site — here we are centralising our operational city services to work more efficiently and with the future in mind. This is Antwerp moving forward.”

On the look of Antwerp

Leave a Reply

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)