Immeuble de commerce et de bureaux EGEMA — Anvers

Commercial and office building in a sober, functional ("zakelijk") Art Deco style, built for the Société Anonyme EGEMA, an Antwerp port company handling and bunkering coal, to a 1937 design by the Brussels architect Apollon Lagache; the works were carried out in 1938 by the contractor Gustave Mayné of Auderghem. According to the inventory, Lagache's architecture evolved in the interwar years from a monumental to a "zakelijk" Art Deco, and the EGEMA building appears to be his only work in Antwerp. The corner complex, of twelve to sixteen bays, has six storeys including a mezzanine under a slate pseudo-mansard; on a reinforced-concrete frame, the upper part is faced with Belvédère brick in brick-on-edge courses with recessed horizontal joints, and the base with artificial-stone panels by the Ghilardi firm. The streamlined character of the architecture rests mainly on the three-lobed curves of the cantilevered upper part, with a corner rotunda and rounded bays carried on a pilotis structure, and on the horizontal alternation of solid bands and continuous windows. The porch keeps its steel door and a wrought-iron grille with a V motif, and the entrance hall an allegorical relief of the port of Antwerp by an unknown artist; the building is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.