Collection by Jaime Gillin
Best of Belgium: Three Days in Antwerp
It's hard to narrow down the highlights of a recent trip Dwell took to Belgium—a whirlwind week covering Antwerp, Ghent, and Brussels, spent meeting architects and designers, exploring neighborhoods, and scouting design shops and houses. Here are some of our favorite discoveries in Antwerp, a city that melds the medieval, Gothic, modernist, and breathtakingly contemporary with aplomb. Stay tuned for the rest of the best, including what we saw in Ghent and Brussels, posting on dwell.com later this week.
Rewind was another favorite discovery on the street. The shop, which is dedicated to what they call "ecodesign," sells environmentally friendly furnishings, jewelry, and housewares from local and international designers. We especially loved the wool felt cushions and rugs from Muskhane, a French company whose natural products are handmade in the Himalayas.
A great place to eat while you're in the neighborhood is Ra, a concept shop stocked with art books and clothing and shoes from cutting-edge fashion designers from around the world. Upstairs there's a sale room with steep discounts on the pricey goods, and downstairs near the entrance is a cozy cafe with sidewalk seating—a prime spot for stylish people-watching.
Travelers usually focus on Antwerp's centrally located Cathedral of Our Lady, but to our eye, the smaller, Gothic St. Paul's Church was even more stunning, with its sombre, graphic black-and-white interior and collection of 17th-century paintings by Flemish masters. Don't miss the beautiful but haunting sculpture garden on site.
Here's the city's 16th-century Grote Markt, or Central Square, with its grand city hall and a fountain depicting the Roman soldier Brabo throwing a giant's severed hand into the river—part of a medieval legend that gave the city its name (the act of throwing the hand is referred to as 'handwerpen' in Flemish). Today you see the hand icon everywhere in Antwerp, from the town flag to boxes of hand-shaped chocolates.
One of the most exciting neighborhoods in the city right now is the Eilandje District, on the city's still-industrial northern waterfront. The neighborhood is currently undergoing a renaissance and building boom, with apartment buildings under construction that will house 6,600 residents by 2020. The most visible new development is the recently opened and much-hyped Museum aan de Stroom (MAS), designed by the Rotterdam firm Neutelings Riedijk and dedicated to telling the story of Antwerp's history as a trading hub.
At the end of our time in Antwerp, we were whisked away by the designers Hannes van Severen and Fien Muller, a young married couple who are both artists-turned-furniture-designers. Today they create minimalist, multipurpose furniture and lamps under the name Muller van Severen. We'll share video footage from our visit to their studio outside Ghent on dwell.com in the coming weeks... stay tuned!