21/01/2026
We are introducing Campus Casinoplein, a new arts campus in Ghent, designed by architectenbureau Compagnie-O + Sabine Okkerse. We are now moving into construction.
The project is rooted in a layered site history. Between the Coupure and today’s Casinoplein, once stood the Casino of Ghent. For decades it housed the Gentse Floraliën, later serving as a military hospital during the First World War, before falling into neglect and being demolished in 1945. What remains is not absence, but a powerful urban memory.
The current campus, a former and known veterinary school, inherits this tradition of public use and robust institutional architecture. Our proposal starts from this existing fabric: preserving, reprogramming and intensifying it. Heritage buildings are treated as active protagonists, while a single, carefully positioned new volume completes the ensemble — transforming a closed institution into an open, legible and civic campus.
together with:
burO Groen
hp engineers
