Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp

KMSKA, Belgium Programme: Renovation in a number of phases of monumental museum, museum lighting and climate control, city centre location, complex logistics Location: Antwerp, Belgium Client: FoCI - Cultural Infrastructure, Fund Brussels Design: 2004 Completion: 2020 (estimated) GFA: 19,000 m2 Construction cost: EUR 12,000,000 (first part) Project team: Kees Kaan, Dikkie Scipio, Dorothee Korr, Eva Franch, Kim Sneyders, Ralph de Schipper, Martin Zwinggi Photograph: Luuk Kramer The assignment for Antwerp’s Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (KMSKA) consists of the drawing up of a Master Plan for the extension and restoration of the museum; and this encompasses more than purely physical changes to the building. It is an extremely long-term project (projected to 2020), with – for the present – a limited budget. Central to our design is a spatial strategy that will enable the museum to remain accessible throughout the entire process of the metamorphosis: the museum will not close for this period. The precondition for achieving this is perfect management of the shell, programme and technology: these components therefore also form the crux of our approach. From an architectural point of view, our approach is reserved, as we are convinced that a museum must be of an exceptional quality: a quality that serves the arts, rather than being a ‘theme park’ in and of itself. This is not so much a design, as an approach to a design. Liberated from the urge to originality, such an approach can take on an almost infinite series of forms; the form is not the ends, but the consequence of an action. The degree of attention with which the action is performed determines the degree of attractiveness.