This weekend we had a visit of Patrick Janssens -the mayor of Antwerp- who invited us to open a Pop Up Shop in Antwerp's City Hall a few months ago. His office is based right above us, so we can consider him as our temporary neighbor.
We were happy to show him our work, how we used the available spaces for the exhibition and the shop and I'm sure that he was happy and impressed by the designers' works.
Mr. Janssens explained the history of the ground floor of the City Hall: in the 16th century, when the City Hall was built, there were also shops created there, the rent of which paid for the people working in the City Hall on the higher floors -possibly this was one of the first shopping malls in the world! The City of Antwerp wants to resurrect this concept and make this corner of Grote Markt more lively again and we're sure it already works: the mayor even 'complained' that sometimes he couldn't focus on his work because our music was playing so loud! Surely that can't have been us;-) We love a mayor with such great and creative ideas, that's for sure.