The city of Antwerp wants to redevelop the site of and old Slaughterhouse into a mixed-use, high-quality area for housing, services, recreation and business. A design team for the public space in the area was appointed in 2020.

Endeavour's task is to refine the program for sport and play in the public space and to attune it to the needs of the young people in the neighbourhood, so as to give the design team the right handles to work with in the actual implementation.

A first step was to talk to the youth service and local organisations to get an idea of the challenges and opportunities within the context of Den Dam. In parallel, we started to build a theoretical framework to get a grip on the spatial and social characteristics of play space.

During a workshop with local youth, we looked more closely at how they use the neighbourhood today. What works, what doesn't? Then we asked them to react to the first design approach.

The result is an advisory document that, in addition to overarching ambitions, also includes specific design rules and examples for each sub-area within the design. Download the ambition framework here and/or visit the website of AG Vespa.