The city of Antwerp is a lovely city with around 500 000 people living here. With a proper old town and great museums this is a nice stop in Europe. I was here to visit a press conference and talk about water.
Antwerp is perhaps best known for it’s fashion heritage. This is the city where Antwerp Six emerged as well as Margiela, Raf Simons and Haider Ackerman got their training and education.
The city have a growing design week with around 100 activities and close to 10 000 visitors. Serax is from the area, as well as designers like Vincent van Duysen and Maarten van Severen.
And 30 minutes from Brussels. To me, it is amazing that these cities are so close to eachother.
It is a beautiful city. Easy to walk around. A bit bigger than expected.
It is a city famous for lace, but I actually didn’t see so much of lace. Antwerp is also known for diamonds, but that was out of my budget…
There are some really nice small shops in the city.
Also a handful of great design galleries, but not all were open on these days (Tuesday and Wednesday)
I love the Dries van Noten flagship.
Museum and exhibition wise, I went to see the Fashion Museum (Momu) which is amazing. Amaaaaaaaaaaaazing. This season they had an exhibition about Antwerp Six and they did everything right. They put the designers in context, talked about their differences and how they worked differently. One was more into photography. One was more into catwalks. Etc, etc.
A whole section with the invitations for the fashion shows.
Ten out of ten points. So good.
Second museum to visit was KMSKA, the big art museum. And I must say, this was perhaps my biggest museum experience of this year. A historical section and a contemporary. Felt like the “major museum” for a country like Belgium and not provincial since Antwerp is not the capital.
Rubens of course.
On the floor with masters there were these huge installations. Strange and liberating.
But the curation was amazing. Here you see a portrait of a mandril by Kokoschka next to Rembrandt. Crazy and amazing.
Eleven out of ten points? One of my highlights of this year.
If you go to Antwerp, make sure to keep an eye on the facades. At the entry of old houses you will find these boot scrapers. I first thought they were part of a downpipe or gutter system, but I realised it is for scarping off dirt on your shoes/boots.
The press conference I attended was at MAS, a contemporary art installation with a courtyward where you can almost see a skeleton. But only from above.
The press conference was about the fair ISH by Messe Frankfurt. The fair is known in the general lifestyle world as being the “bathroom fair”, but it is a fair focusing more and more on the things happening behind the walls rather than just bathtubs and showerheads. One of the speakers talked about how the water pipe system in Europe is getting outdated and in need of better solutions. Also since we have these extreme summers nowadays. In the UK some of the houses were left without water. Check out more here.
I look forward to see the fair in March and continue this conversation about water efficiency or “Smart Water”.