glass entrance

Central entrance portal for the Antwerp Cathedral | Wonderwerk

To get ‘light but no insight’ in the cathedral, glass was an ideal material to play an important role. Steenmeijer architects called upon us to give it an artistic interpretation. The monumental wooden exterior doors of the main portal on the outside have a grid of wrought iron nails. We have this image translated into glass and continued in the new situation. The final result integrates the portal in the existing entrance situation. Lack of transparency and openness meet: so massive and closed the wooden doors, so massive and transparent the glass walls are. The minimalist design of the glass does not push on and give the magnificent cathedral a contemporary accent.

For the ceiling light we also did a layout. The grid of the halogen lamps runs both in length and in the width direction. We can dim the lights, depending on what kind of attention we want the portal to draw

Client : Province of Antwerp