Ghent. A factory hiding amongst the houses

Designed by Trans architecture in Ghent, the new factory building of Ryhove restructures the site and organizes the logistics in an efficient way. Additional factory space and an underground parking were built. An important ambition was to make the industrial expansion acceptable in a residential area. That is why the “terraced house typology” was chosen as a reference for the intervention.

The street facade was divided into parts with a width of approx. five meters. The building got a simple pitched roof. Around the corner, the roof is tripled. A loading and unloading area is organized in the middle of site: the handling of the goods is not hidden but placed in the heart of the factory. The building is made with standardized, prefabricated elements. Concrete columns, CLT panels and metal sandwich elements were assembled to make a construction with a character that oscillates between an urban and peripheral building.