Antwerp skin warehouses: Magazijn Alfred (1881) reused

In the seventies of the nineteenth century, Antwerp was the very first European center for the trade of exotic skins with an extensive permanent stock in the warehouses in the port. In the district of the goods station in Antwerp North, six skin warehouses were built during this period. They had a specific architecture and load-bearing structure to meet the storage requirements of the dried and salted skins. When the port activities moved further northwards at the end of the twentieth century, the warehouses lost their storage function. Today, they are reused as houses and offices. This paper focuses on the reconversion of the largest former skin warehouse, Magazijn Alfred in the Duboisstraat. The building was bought by a group of entrepreneurs with a love for industrial heritage in 1999 and, together with architects Angst and D'hoore, was transformed into offices, residences, showrooms and warehouses.

Publication year:2018

Keywords:Warehouses, Industrial Heritage, Skin warehouses, Reconversions, 19th century, Antwerp