The UK may be home to some impressively refurbished railway buildings such as Coal Drops Yard at King’s Cross in central London, but a Belgian scheme is redeveloping such structures on a bigger scale. The vast steel train sheds of the former Gare Maritime close to the docks in Brussels are being transformed into a neighbourhood of offices, retail and leisure facilities – including a dozen timber pavilions built within the 40,000m² of land enclosed by the historic frames.

The 1902 structure, with a footprint of 276m by 138m, is one of the largest railway buildings in Europe, and from 1907 was a central part of the Belgian capital’s freight interchange facility on the 37ha site now known as Tour & Taxis. But changes to how goods were distributed and the opening of EU borders closed the customs facilities, and in the 1990s the site was put up for sale.

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