The redevelopment of Ghent’s Belgacom Tower is as much an urban planning project as an architectural one. Indeed, the current clunky T-shaped block, with its hard facades and raised plinth, does not seek any contact with the surrounding historic urban fabric, an imbalance that is corrected in the new design.

The gesture is to free up the main building, and graft four new slender volumes onto it. A light, horizontally articulated façade is wrapped around this new figure like a cloak, folded to respond precisely to the context. Terraces and urban gardens, stretched between building and façade, extend the urban life of the forecourt and surrounding park to the top of the building. A maligned, anti-urban monolith thus becomes a new, open and light, landmark for Ghent.