The Hidden Recesses and the Four Gates
Orçun Yazıcı
September 2024
Ventilation building #1. Photo by Nick Somers.
I am an ant in the city of Antwerp
Curiously, impatiently, I walk through the narrow streets for hours, peering up at rows of brick facades with their small, medieval windows. I pause before a stone building adorned with crossed iron ties to prevent its collapse.
Amber.
Stepped gable.
The thin facade veils the realm inside.
What mysteries lie beyond this weathered wall?
A temptation swells within me to ring the doorbell and beg permission to peer inside. Could it be that this edifice is no mere building—but rather a gate to Antwerp’s hidden recesses?
I am an ant in the city of Antwerp
When the facade is merely a wall, I explore the realm beyond that wall
When the facade reaches out toward the horizon, I descend into earth, perpendicular
I am an ant in the city of Antwerp
Antwerp is my building and I trace the air shafts of this building,
To access the hidden recesses
Ventilation building #2. Photo by Nick Somers.
The facade struggles to be seen independently of the rest of the building, to be trusted on its own terms. We have relied on the facade to tell us stories about the politics and culture of societies; for instance, the extent of Baroque-era ornamentation signals the wealth and status of its patronage. But a facade, concealing what lies behind, highlights a dual nature: It is both curtain and mirror, joining the city’s fabric while keeping secrets to itself. Traces of vital infrastructure are glimpsed behind the mask, as with a ventilation building’s fixed expression covering the enormous air shafts positioned above underground tunnels, exchanging polluted air for fresh air in a continuous, heaving breath.
The facade is a hanging drapery of a theater set
Facade conceals, it is a mask
A facade is a dress: hinting, obscuring
Ventilation building #3. Photo by Nick Somers.
Ventilation building #4. Photo by Nick Somers.
Antwerp camouflages the new with the old, creating an impression of venerable antiquity and a seamless urban fabric. The city marks the hidden crossings of the River Scheldt with pairs of buildings facing one another across the water, standing above the underground tunnels that connect the left bank (Linkeroever) with the city center (Rechteroever). The famous Sint-Anna Tunnel, a prime destination for tourists, was built in the early 20th century for pedestrians and cyclists. Its entrances are located at two identical, standalone Art-Deco buildings (designed by Belgian architect Émile Van Averbeke in 1933) with facades clad in yellow brick. One is located in Sint-Jansvliet (Rechteroever), a lively public square shaded by large lush trees. This square serves as a basketball court during the week and transforms into an antique market on Sundays. The Linkeroever entrance, in contrast, is situated within a quieter residential neighborhood, distinct from the historic and bustling surroundings of the Rechteroever entrance. Beyond the ground level, these buildings are not shops nor apartments; they are vertical voids, disguised with a thin layer of facade to hide the residuals of modernity.
I embark on a journey into an unseen realm through a wood-framed glass door, where the antique musk mingles with the hum and rhythmic clatter of machinery. The gate opens and I enter one of the hidden recesses of Antwerp.
A short walk through a brightly glazed hallway leads me to the original wooden escalators, still in use after 90 years. I descend amid the mechanical thrum, and I’m walking through a tunnel, over half a kilometer long, clad in blue and white tiles.
The deeper I go, the stronger the scent gets.
Aged wood with hints of dampness.
At the end of the tunnel, this time I go up. There is a moment of deja-vu, but in reverse. The gate is closed now, time to leave the structure.
Ventilation building #5. Photo by Nick Somers.
Ventilation building #6. Photo by Nick Somers.
As I’m moving away from the gate, my imagination takes me to the 18th-century Potemkin village. The story goes that during an inspection trip by Empress Catherine II of Russia, Grigory Potemkin built fake facades all along the empress' route with the hope of impressing her—a village of illusion, rendering political and social prosperity through the facades.
My thoughts drift to the red tiled facades along Protocol Road, the airport road in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. The 15 km long highway is an important axis between the city and the airport, an introduction to Ankara that is intended to leave a lasting impression on local and foreign visitors alike. Red tiles clad the facade of every building along Protocol Road, but only the road-facing facade, to create an appealing and uniform street image. 300 years after the Potemkin myth, the facade is still trusted to convey a disguise, to create an illusion.
I soon find myself searching for traces of the hidden recesses in-between the buildings of Antwerp. One day during a visit, I stumble upon another Art-Deco building: one of the ventilation buildings of the Waasland Tunnel, which also crosses the River Scheldt. It is detached from the adjacent buildings, clad in familiar yellow brick and concrete Art-Deco elements.
I feel the coldness around the structure. My eyes travel along a long vertical window like a path to the sky, pausing occasionally on the concrete elements that disrupt its vertical continuity. Back on the ground, a dark small door crammed beneath the tower greets me like a gate to an unseen realm. I look across the river to Linkeroever and find a nearly identical ventilation building standing at the other end of the tunnel: structures not for the living, but for their mechanisms.
Ventilation buildings of Antwerp are gates to the hidden recesses:
Dark voids we created to fulfill our expectations from our environment.
As the demands of our cities grow, their infrastructural artifacts can no longer be discreetly tucked away in the corners of existing buildings; they insist upon their own accommodation within the urban fabric. The four gates of Antwerp, structures built to mediate the imposition of the mechanical behemoth into the urban realm nearly 100 years ago, invite reflection on the ethos of integration between the infrastructure of our cities and their human denizens.
First, the non-livings demanded space from the living;
then the gates of Antwerp appeared.
Ventilation building #7. Photo by Nick Somers.
Ventilation building #8. Photo by Nick Somers.
