The project for the public space of Leopold De Waelplaats and the forecourt of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts is a careful intervention inside the mechanical and formal framework of axial perspective lines that constitutes this 19th Century district of the city. Within this urban whole, the Museum of Fine Arts works as a focus for this network of streets and junctions.

   
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This urban space has three distinct parts: at both ends of the nodes, the spaces formed by the meeting of orthogonal and diagonal streets; at the center, a linear space, between the facade of the museum and the mass of the building opposite. The layout fixes this tripartite quality, but by cutting the space, provides a stronger connection between the museum facade and the square in front. The group of plane trees form an urban roof, while allowing a clear view of the upper galleries and cornice of the museum from the diagonal streets.

The layout of Leopold De Waelplaats provides wide pavements for pedestrians beside a level resolution of car, bus, tram and bycicle traffic. The intervention uses a large amount of recovered material, including cobbles and granite kerbs.

In contrast with the dynamic quality of Leopold De Waalplaats, the forecourt of the museum is an open air waiting and rest place, a place for meeting and conversation. It is a square whose functions accompany the museum visit. In the center of the museum forecourt we find a reflecting pool, a project by the Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias. The idea is to create a pool over an abyss: to create the illusion of a deep cut at the bottom, into which the water disappears. Through the water you can see the bottom of the pool. Its floor is a bas-relief, in concrete, of vegetal forms (leaves, mushrooms, etc.), dark in order to ensure the reflection of the museum portico on the water. At the bottom, a cut in the floor allows water to drain away and flow in. The piece has a timer that creates four stages in the water:

1. Full, the water is completely still, forming a mirror in which the facade is reflected;
2. the water stirs and disapppears into the abyss;
3. the basin lies empty, like a drained lake;
4. the water stirs again, rising to fill the pool, until the water lies completely still once more, forming a mirror.

The work started in August 1998 and ended in May 1999, in time for the Van Dyck exhibition at the museum.