FelixArchief, Antwerp, Belgium. Architect: Robbrecht en Daem Architecten, 2006.

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In 2006, the archives of the City of Antwerp moved into the nineteenth-century 20,000 sq m Sint-FelixPakhuis tobacco warehouse, on the waterfront at Willemdok. Robbrecht en Daem Architecten restored the entire building, while minimising alterations to the structure and ensuring that significant interventions could be undone later if required. The building now houses an entrance and visitor facilities on the ground floor (accessed from a covered internal street), four floors of storage (with 18 separate concrete containers to ensure optimum fire and atmospheric control), and a strikingly restored top floor. This provides a new reading room and meeting areas under a soaring oak ceiling, lit by three glass lightwells. Robbrecht en Daem also designed almost all the furniture: oak veneer desks in the Reading Room, for instance, create a calm and elegant atmosphere under the grand oak ceiling. Wooden benches with coloured stripes are placed throughout the public areas.