The Fierens Blocks in Antwerpen’s St Andries district were designed and built in 1937-1939 by architect Gustave Fierens (1881-1962), commissioned by the social housing company “Onze Woning”. It is an outstanding example of modern , large-scale social housing in Antwerp from the interwar period. For twenty years its existence was threatened, in 2008 demolition was considered, but local residents managed to turn the tide. 

In 2015, the residential blocks became the property of AG Vespa, the autonomous municipal agency for real estate and urban projects of the City of Antwerpen. In 2018, after a feasibility and thorough structural-technical study, restoration and renovation works started in 2020 and were  completed in 2023. Meanwhile, Fierens’ “Modernist residential blocks Onze Woning” were ‘designated as established architectural heritage’ in 2019 by the Flemish Government.

The Fierens Blocks are located opposite the Tropical Institute, an art deco building from 1925-1933 (architects Marcel Spittael and Paul Le Bon). The Fierens Blocks‘ square building plot of about  3300 m², is split by a newly built street, with one larger, enclosed building block with inner court and an elongated building with open court behind it. The complex of 7 or 8 floors originally contained 205 residential units, including 194 apartments and 11 ground-floor residential shops with a mezzanine floor  and five to eight floors with apartments, a basement with bicycle storage and individual storage spaces for the flats, partially open drying attics on the flat roofs. The building has concrete structure of columns and beams, with hollow floor  slabs, and is filled in with inner and outer walls in brickwork masonry. Outer walls consisted of an inner brickwork wall, a 2 cm cavity and an outer brickwork facing. The apartments of the larger block have balconies on the courtyard side, this of the smaller block on the street side, with all over wooden windows and doors joinery (painted), except for steel windows in the staircases. The building is fully equipped with modern comfort facilities: staircases with elevators (11 of them), individual doorbells,  Frankfurt or CUBEX kitchen furniture with a gas fire and electrical sockets, bathrooms with individual water heater, built-in wardrobes and cupboards, individual heating stoves (and a socket for any connection of electric heating appliances), garbage shafts, full electric  lighting, natural ventilation through opening windows. Bedrooms have wooden floors, all other rooms have ceramic tiles with colourful decorative patterns, kitchen and bathroom walls are covered with faience tiles, staircases have a terrazzo finishing.      

In 2016, out of 30 applications from architectural firms, five were retained by AG Vespa for a limited competition: according to the jury, the proposal  by Happel Cornelisse Verhoeven Molenaar &Co architects (Rotterdam, NL) offered the best answer to AG Vespa‘s demands for a renovation “with great respect for the existing architecture“. 

The number of residential units was reduced from 205 to 122. A balanced distribution of various sizes was decided, in accordance with both social housing norms and the real estate market, ranging from one-bedroom flats (40 to 60 sq m) to larger family flats with three (90 to 115 m²) or four bedrooms (120 to 160 m²). Besides 107 ‘affordable’ rental flats – rented at a 20% to 25% reduction compared to market rents – the Fierens Blocks today contain cohousing flats, workspaces and eight commercial premises with mezzanine and basement, also ‘affordable’. Special attention was paid to specific technical and comfort issues: circulation, fire safety and evacuation strategy, acoustics and thermal comfort. The 11 original lift cages (in the larger block) were preserved but as elevators replaced by 8 new ones. As the original composition of the outer walls caused serious humidity problems, more particularly as to the south-west oriented facades: in that case the inner (non-loadbearing) wall was replaced by a 14 cm wall of hollow bricks, keeping the void (with necessary water and vapour barrier and ventilation), not touching and preserving the outer brickwork facing.

In terms of heritage care, AG Vespa opted for the preservation of residential and retail functions and the private character of the inner areas of the blocks, and the preservation of historically valuable elements such as the image-defining role of the building volumes in the urban context, the characteristic facades and essential interior elements.

The restoration and renovation project is entirely in line with the heritage value assessment and conservation and restoration objectives already formulated earlier in a 2008 CHE report (cultural, historic and aesthetic evaluation), in a detailed 2016 historical study (Liedewij Elsen, UAntwerpen), in the Inventory of Immovable Heritage (AOE / Immovable Heritage Agency of the Flemish Government), in response to the 2019 listing or “designation as established architectural heritage”. Architect Gustave Fierens showed again the way …

Hanne VANREUSEL, Luc VERPOEST, ‘Fierens wijst de weg …’. Restauratie en renovatie van een sociaal wooncomplex in Antwerpen uit de late jaren dertig, in: M&L (Monumenten, Landschappen en Archeologie), XLIII, 2024, nr. 4, p. 40-60