You would be forgiven for missing the opening of De Grote Post, Ostend’s new culture centre. Though it’s been in the press for a couple of years, mostly with an air of relief that the building, which has stood empty since 1999, would finally be put to good use, it began staging events quietly, with invitation-only performances by Tom Lanoye and Wouter Deprez last December.

This is because the new centre, which is as gigantic as it is stylish, isn’t actually finished. The flurry of construction attests to this as I toured the building recently, admiring the retro feel of the entryway, enjoying a drink in the bathedin- red ground-floor cafe, climbing the shallow steps of the “tubes”.

People get lost, confides the young man tasked with showing me around. I can understand why. Between ascending in the glass tubes and heading down back stairs, I’m completely turned around within minutes. The centre seems to go on and on, tempting you along with its endless corridors and doorways, begging comparisons to Ghent’s famous cultural centre Vooruit.

Though its atmosphere is very different from that early 20th-century socialist stronghold. De Grote Post is a mixture of new and old, of modern industrial and post-war functional. It is 10,800 square metres of theatres, concert halls, studios, reception areas and offices.

And this magnitude is ironic – because before this, Ostend had almost no performing arts spaces whatsoever.

Everything is possible

“I was here as a child,” muses Stefan Tanghe nostalgically. “It was the post office that served Ostend and also the offices for the local branch of Belgacom.” Tanghe has lived in Ostend his entire life, and now he’s the director of the city’s first performing arts centre.

In the year 2000, Tanghe started a small business called Eipiyt, which stood for Everything is Possible if You Try. Though the business no longer exists, he’s certainly proven the title to be true.

For the entire decade of the 1990s, Tanghe worked for the investment group of Rock Torhout. He then founded Eipiyt, which acted as a business consultant for cultural centres and events. In 2003, he headed up the Literaal literary festival in Ostend, once part of the triennial Beaufort.

He continued to organise cultural bits and bobs in Ostend and, in 2006, was asked to take over the financially strapped performance festival Theater aan Zee. He got the finances in order and turned it into the popular multi-disciplinary festival with the ever-hip curators (Arno, Josse De Pauw, Stef Kamil Carlens…) that it is now.

For good measure, he went ahead and founded Vrijstaat O, which, until De Grote Post, was the best thing to happen to Ostend’s cultural scene in two decades. Though it has no performance space, Vrijstaat O is a cultural centre that helps artists develop work and hosts now high-profile festivals – such as Dansand and Freestate – that have (finally) drawn people away from their familiar city centre arts havens and to the coast.

So it would be hard to imagine any other choice than Tanghe to head up De Grote Post. He talks about Ostend’s long journey to becoming an arts capital of the coast. He’s at the centre of it but modestly gives credit to the local government installed in the 2006 elections. It was the priorities of mayor Jean Vandecasteele and the city council, he says, that allowed him to accomplish the work he has done.

He also speaks highly of Ostend’s culture alderwoman Hilde Veulemans and Johan Vande Lanotte, the federal minister in charge of North Sea concerns, who lives in Ostend. “He has been very active in the well-being of this town,” says Tanghe. “Between 1996 and 2006, Ostend went through a lot of public works and urban improvements. By 2006, they knew very well that it was time to work on its cultural side. It’s very ambitious, the proposals that they have made for this little city. It’s been a great period of Renaissance.”

Tanghe is speaking to me from the cafe of De Grote Post, against a backdrop of heavy drilling and a meeting taking place on the other side of the room with the building’s architectural team. At the same time, the centre is already hosting performances. “The works started in 2010, and we had our first performance in 2012,” says Tanghe, “which is very, very fast.”

He’s also still working out budgets, infrastructure and how the centre will co-operate with the Casino (previously the only other performing arts space in the city), Vrijstaat O and other organisations. “It’s a new motor, and we’re starting the engine.”

Eysselinck’s masterpiece

The building now known as De Grote Post was designed by modern architect Gaston Eysselinck. He designed mostly homes, and this functional post office was his only public building. Also a furniture designer, he outfitted its interiors furnishings as well and worked with artist Joe Maes to create intricate etched glasswork and ceramic reliefs, which remain.

Built in the early 1950s, the building garnered little attention. But by the 1970s, it was referred to as the Flemish architect’s masterpiece, a successful marriage of form and function, with an innovative use of natural light.

The sculpture that graces the lower tier at the front of the building is by Jozef Cantré, a friend of Eysselinck’s. The architect in fact had to fight with the city to get it placed, and it arrived only in 1963. It’s lucky for De Grote Post that it did, as it suggests arts and culture to arriving guests in a way that the rest of the exterior cannot.

The building became a protected monument in 1981. The post moved out of the building in 1999, and it stood empty, the subject of much debate about what should be done with it. The city finally bought it in 2007, and construction started three years later. The project cost just over €35 million, with €7 million coming from the government of Flanders, €2 million from the province of West Flanders and €26 million from the city of Ostend.

Renovating a monument

Antwerp’s B Architecten beat out the seven other Belgian firms that made it through to the final selection to design De Grote Post. Their previous experience in the cultural sector, including the design of exhibition spaces and the renovation of Brussels’ Beursschouwburg, gave them an edge in coming up with creative solutions for specific challenges.

“We desperately wanted this project,” smiles Dirk Engelen of B Architecten. “Working in theatre is one thing, but they needed someone who could handle the complete redesign of a huge infrastructure and the specific situation relating to a monument – altering it as little as possible.”

One of B Architecten’s defining decisions was to demolish sections that had been added on to Eysselinck’s original building in later decades, rather than trying to use them. “The quality of these additions was not the same as Eysselinck’s,” explains Engelen. “By taking them away, you see more the quality of the monument, which had become a little hidden.”

B Architecten put an outdoor amphitheatre behind the building, and added new buildings behind that. Then they came up with their crowning achievement. They connected the old and new buildings with stairwells encased in glass and steel. “It was the key solution and the starting point to making what was up until recently just an office building into a public space.”

It’s also beautiful, the sort of design that defines a building and makes it instantly recognisable. Psychologically, the structures offer the impression of connecting the best of the past with the progress of the present, literally bridging our trespass between the two.

Room for a pony

De Grote Post houses six performances spaces, with several more studio and reception areas that have multiple-use possibilities. Some are perfect for headbanging rock concerts, others for more intimate acoustic performances and others for dance and theatre. In order to maintain the integrity of the monument, B Architecten sunk the largest hall, with 430 seats, below the ground (pictured).

Stages can be lowered into the ground and acoustical walls erected or removed. The staff are still considering how to use some of the spaces: One gorgeous little lecture hall in the original building, with wooden seats and colourful murals, can be used for talks or even a comedy show.

A behind-the-scenes tour of such a project – and we can no doubt expect those during Heritage Day or Open Monument Day – drives home the successful and total fusion of old and new in De Grote Post. Just when I thought I was in one of the new buildings, a lengthy coat rack, attached to the tiled floor, jarred me into realising I was in Eysselinck’s design. Every golden coat hook has a round ball at the top of it. In the 1950s, of course, everyone wore a hat.

www.degrotepost.be

What’s on at De Grote Post

Instant Karma

29-30 March
The two-day music festival moves out of Ostend’s Casino and into De Grote Post. Its 20 bands and DJs, including Dutch roots rocker Blaudzun, Flanders’ synth-pop band Maya’s Moving Castle and dance beats from Brussels’ Montevideo, are also scattered around other bars and clubs in the city. www.karmahotel.be

Wouter Deprez

2 April, 20.30
The Flemish comedian brings De avond van de luistervink (The Evening of the Eavesdropper) to Ostend. The one-man-show revolves around the sounds of daily life and how feelings of nostalgia are more closely related to hearing than to any other sense. www.wouterdeprez.be

Claudio Stellato

10 April, 15.00 & 20.30
A performance for all ages, l’Autre shows off the talents of the Brussels-based artist, whose ability to manipulate his body into, out of and around various objects will make you question the laws of physics. www.l-autre.be

Check De Grote Post’s website for a full programme