deSingel

deSingel in Antwerp is a purpose-built arts campus whose 966-seat Blue Hall gives orchestras, pianists and adventurous music projects a formal concert-room setting. Its defining feature is a shared life with the Royal Conservatoire: the venue grew around a school, then expanded into a public platform for music, dance, theatre and architecture. That institutional mix places recitals, electronic sets and staged concerts inside a working modernist complex instead of a standalone club.

A conservatoire’s public stage

Architect Léon Stynen’s first completed piece of the campus opened in 1968 as the new Royal Conservatoire, with classrooms facing two internal gardens. Plans for its concert hall, theatre and library paused amid funding shortages, then restarted in 1973 after Antwerp governor Andries Kinsbergen proposed housing BRT 2 Antwerp in the complex. Conservatoire director Eugène Traey hired Frie Leysen on December 1, 1979, to prepare the hall complex for public life. deSingel officially opened on November 4, 1980, with King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola present. The scale exceeded the conservatoire’s teaching needs and gave Leysen room to build an arts centre with an international outlook. In 2010, a 12,000-square-metre addition by Stéphane Beel joined Stynen’s structures while retaining their modernist framework.

The room today

Expect a curated, cross-disciplinary bill: the current programme filters music alongside theatre, dance, architecture, performance, festivals and talks. Its music range runs from classical and opera to improvised jazz, electronic and ambient work, pop, and contemporary composition, with staged hybrids alongside straight concerts. Blue Hall has 966 seats, while the 803-seat Red Hall serves theatre and dance; during Blue Hall renovation it has been adapted as a concert room. A 270-seat Red Studio supports smaller-scale performances, and the on-site Grand Café serves food and drinks.