POK - Performance Arts Center

This project for a new Performing Arts center in the historic inner-city of Leuven, is conceived as the lively public focal point of a new green urban quarter (Hertogensite) in which the old and the new are viewed as natural extensions of one another. The space between the existing ‘Romaanse Poort’ and the new Performance Arts Center becomes an animated urban foyer that accommodates greenery, water, play and urban spectacle.

The new performing arts building is designed as a three-dimensional matrix that weaves itself around the two auditoriums, acting as a flexible playing field. The clear organizational layout—divided into three distinct zones—combined with a series of clever connections, makes it possible to open up the building extensively and render it permeable to the city. The building invites a flexible approach to the traditional separation between front-of-house and back-of-house areas.