Description

The administrative headquarters of the ING Group in Hungary is located in Budapest’s business district, in an eclectic neo-Renaissance building erected in 1882.

In spite of the fundamentally conservative attitude of the urban planners and the requirements for conservation of historical buildings which do not allow any building alterations that might be visible from the street, the client wanted a building explicitly oriented towards the future, both in relation to the quality of workplaces and efficiency, as well as in relation to the architectonic representation of the corporate goals. Erick van Egeraat therefore supplemented the required authentic restoration with a very few modern elements and an uncompromisingly new building attached to the back of it. The ING Group (Internationale Nederlanden Groep) resulting from the 1991 merger of two Dutch banks, Nationale Nederlanden and NMB Postbank Groep, is active in banking, insurance and property administration. In order to represent the coexistence of the two companies and the values they identify with, old and new elements were consciously placed in harmonious concordance with each other. What was a richly decorated salon on the first floor is now the bank’s conference hall. The modern contrast to this is the free form of the boardroom of the insurance department, suspended over the main stairway. This ‘whale’ appears to be swimming in a glass court­yard roof lying on top of laminated glass beams. An additional new element is the two-storey open-plan office accommodation that was created in the existing roof space.

The extension, a rationalistic steel structure with a climate envelope of partially printed glass, is attached to the south side of the building and creates a balance between old and new. Due to the generous ceiling height adopted from the old building and the fully glazed façades and interior partitions, the building has superb natural lighting. The open-plan layout of the floors can be flexibly used for a variety of office concepts. By request of the authority for the preservation of historic buildings, at the seams where the old and the new buildings meet, the glass of the façades was ornamented with silk-screen print so that the façades continue the rhythm of the window openings in the old building. The double façade and a cooling ceiling executed below a suspended ceiling of expanded metal ensure a comfortable interior climate both in summer and in winter. The space between the insulating glazing at the exterior boundary and the single-glazed interior serves to draw off waste air and air heated by the sun’s rays. The air is drawn in at floor level and drawn off through the ceilings. In winter, the double façade functions as a buffer and thereby prevents draught formation at the interior façade.

The ING Group’s first branch in Eastern Europe is a model of environmental sensitivity and at the same time originality in dealing with a listed building in a historical town centre.

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Originally published in: Rainer Hascher, Simone Jeska, Birgit Klauck, Office Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2002.