If it’s axiomatic that no successful urban regeneration is complete without its architectural showpiece then it’s equally clear that the authorities in the Belgian city of Antwerp are taking no chances with their plans for the commercial, cultural and residential revitalisation of Het Eilandje, a historic port area that stretches north from the city along the river Scheldt. Not content with a single icon, the revitalised docks will ultimately boast three.

Th e first is the €33m Museum aan de Stroom, which opens in May on a prominent site close to the city centre. Designed by Rotterdam architects Neutelings Riedijk, it’s a strikingly tough-looking 60m stack of exhibition spaces, uniting five diverse collections to create a unified municipal museum for the city and providing a new visitor centre for the port. It stands on the site where a palatial warehouse belonging to the Hanseatic League – an alliance of trading cities and guilds that stretched along the North European coast – once stood, and though the project was dogged in its initial phases by political controversy, it has been delivered on time and under

budget. It will act as a focus for the more established, southern section of the Eilandje regeneration zone – focusing on the city’s oldest dock, the Napoleonic-era Bonapartedok, and the adjacent Willemdok, which also dates from the early 19th century. Projects already completed here include the refurbishment of the Sint Felix warehouse to create a new municipal archive and library. The quaysides have been transformed into handsome boardwalks, the waters of the Willemdok harbour a recently extended 300-berth marina and the Bonapartedok offers a permanent mooring to a collection of historic ships. Gridded streets and a relatively domestic scale alternate with expanses of water hereabouts; the name Het Eilandje – The Island – refers to this historic juxtaposition of buildings and water.

Next in line is the Red Star Line/People on the Move museum on the banks of the Scheldt, due to open in 2012. Housed in the buildings which once processed Eastern European migrants before their embarkation on the Red Star Line steamers that took them to America, it will represent a fascinating counterpoint to New York’s Ellis Island Immigration Museum and has been converted by the same architects, Beyer Blinder Belle. The museum will offer a visitor focus for the Montevideowijk area immediately to the north of the older docks. In contrast to the densely packed area to the south, this will be a more open and spacious zone, punctuated by six luxurious residential towers by star architects along the west side of the Kattendijkdok. Work on the towers began in 2006 and is due for completion by 2013; the first are already finished and planning permission has recently been granted for the third tower, by UK practice David Chipperfield Architects. With prices rising to €2.4m for the 400m2 penthouses, these towers are aimed firmly at the city’s affluent professionals.

If anything can steal the Museum aan de Stroom’s thunder it is surely the €31m Antwerp Port Authority headquarters on a prominent waterside site at the northern tip of Montevideowijk. Here, Zaha Hadid plans an audacious 46m lozenge-shaped structure rising out of an existing historic building and clad with triangular glass panels that reference Antwerp’s role as the centre of the world diamond trade.

It is an intentionally attention-seeking structure: “The new port house design reflects the city’s worldwide significance in communications and transportation,” says Hadid. It should be complete by 2014.

Not everything promises to be quite so showy. To the east of the Montevideowijk, a 10-year partnership between city planners and real-estate agents AG Vespa will by 2020 create a new urban community in the Cadixwijk district. “It has a different atmosphere to the other areas,” says Eilandje project manager Filip Smits. “It’s more of a residential neighbourhood, while they’re more metropolitan in character.” Pump-primed by €25m of public money, the scheme to create a mixed-income neighbourhood for 4,000 people will be self-financing in the long run, with public works funded by the phased release of plots to private developers.

The story doesn’t end there. After Cadixwijk, attention will turn to the regeneration of docks further to the north. Antwerp’s shiny new dockland icons may cut a dash, but the city is nevertheless in this for the long haul.