Masterplan water Oude Landen, Antwerp

Three streams draw the plan

Oude Landen is a residential landscape at the northern edge of Antwerp, in Ekeren, holding a large nature reserve, large-scale rail infrastructure and the relicts of its farming past. It is one of the key identity projects of the city's Water Plan. Felixx developed its water masterplan with Deltares for the City of Antwerp. The plan restores the three streams that once structured the area and makes them the framework for everything that follows: water, ecology, recreation, public space and the district's future development.

Key info

Year: 2022 - 2024
Type: Masterplan
Size: 408 ha
Location: Antwerp, Belgium
Client: City of Antwerp
Status: Approved

Retain, delay, infiltrate

Antwerp's Water Plan and Green Plan set the direction for the whole city. Rainwater is to be held, slowed and infiltrated where it falls, so that natural systems absorb heavier storms and carry the city through longer droughts. Every district has a part in that, and Oude Landen has a large one.

The area sits upstream of the dense city, where water gathers before it moves on towards the Schelde. It is one of Antwerp's principal retention landscapes. Its historic water structures had deteriorated, and the result was both problems at once: flooding after heavy rain, desiccation in dry spells. For the area to do its job under the coming climate, the water system needs more storage, slower discharge, better infiltration and room for water levels to rise and fall.

Three streams, three characters

Three streams built this landscape: the Donkse Beek, the Oudenlandse Beek and the Laarse Beek. Together they set how water moved through it. Urbanisation cut them from their valleys — straightened, culverted, broken into pieces — and development stopped reading the water system altogether.

The masterplan gives the streams back their role as the spatial framework, and each takes on its own character. The Donkse Beek carries the cultural history and village character of Ekeren. The Oudenlandse Beek becomes a recreational corridor linking the neighbourhoods to the nature reserve. The Laarse Beek regains its meanders and ecological banks. Three valleys, three identities, one blue-green framework that reconnects Oude Landen to Antwerp's water system.

Three water scenarios, one model

How could the water system function better? Felixx and Deltares answered by modelling three distinct scenarios, each a different way of meeting the task the water sets.

Three water scenarios, one model

The first concentrates storage in large buffer landscapes: retention areas that hold excess rainfall and release it in dry periods. The second widens the watercourses, restoring the stream profiles so water moves and floods less. The third distributes infiltration through the urban fabric in small-scale measures — permeable surfaces, green roofs, rain gardens — so runoff drops and groundwater recharges.

Each scenario was tested against the area's full set of ambitions: planned developments, ecological corridors, recreational routes, public space. Felixx and Deltares then merged the strongest elements of all three into one integrated model. It maximises retention, infiltration and adaptive management, and it puts the water agenda to work as the engine of the others: every water intervention realises a piece of the development, ecology, recreation or public space agenda, reinforces it, and connects it to the next. That step turns water from a technical layer into the structure that drives the plan.

The streams drew the first plan of Oude Landen. The masterplan gives them the district back.

Built project by project

The long-term vision becomes an adaptive implementation framework: spatial principles and nature-based building blocks, each tied to an existing or planned area development. Every project contributes to its own surroundings and to the city's water strategy at the same time.

Quick wins begin the transformation. Larger redevelopments — Rozemaaipark among them — complete the blue-green framework step by step, so Oude Landen grows into a water landscape that keeps gaining ecological, spatial and social value as it matures.

Working together

Felixx led the masterplan for the City of Antwerp between 2022 and 2024, and the city presented it in November 2024. Deltares built and tested the hydrological scenarios and the integrated model. Delbaere Consulting advised on ecology.

Want to learn more?

Elan Redekop van der Meulen

Associate partner, landscape architect, researcher

Elan is a landscape architect who graduated from Delft University of Technology with a bachelor's degree in Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences, and a master's degree in Landscape Architecture. Since 2018, Elan has been working at Felixx, having previously gained experience at wUrck Architecture, Urban Planning, and Landscape Architecture. Elan leads the landscape and strategy team and specialises in large-scale strategic projects with a focus on climate change, biodiversity and water-related challenges. In 2023, Elan joined the management team at Felixx as an associate.

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