Description

The Veenman company, established in 1903, specializes in the production of high-quality and multicolor printed formats. The range of products includes leaflets, company brochures and company magazines as well as coffee-table books and art catalogues. The new printing works were built in Ede in 1998 in order to optimize quality, delivery time and delivery safety. The plane site is situated on the edge of town, and borders onto a motorway to the south. To the east and north, there is a scattering of industrial buildings. The architects regarded their task – namely to design an alternative to the common faceless commercial and industrial buildings and to cope with a tight budget – equally as a challenge and an inspiration.

The concept of the Veenman printing plant building aims to reinterpret the traditional relationship between office staff and manual workers. Consequently, the various uses – administration, production and storage – are concealed behind a homogenous façade. Office spaces and the production hall share the same square courtyard and have direct visual contact with each other through large window panes. The courtyard is laid out like a Japanese garden, with conifers and slatted timber paths. It forms a contrast to the adjacent office spaces and creates a pleasant working environment. The courtyard scheme provides natural daylight for the western administrative wing. The production area to the east of the courtyard occupies nearly half of the floor area.

A simple steel skeleton forms the load-bearing structure. It is supplemented by prefabricated reinforced concrete panels in the façade areas, without window openings. The building has a V-shaped roof so that its outline appears to be an abstraction of the company logo from the street. The two-storey office wing and the storage spaces are located in the higher volumes at the edge of the building while the production hall is located in the lower middle section. Two areas at ground floor level are recessed and highlighted by blue panels: the main entrance on the southeastern corner, which is also marked by the storey-high load-bearing company logo; and the opposite corner, where the storage entrance with a large sliding gate is situated.

The striking façade consists of a massive dark base of black cast concrete stones and a row of windows on top; above, the façade is completely glazed. However, this façade is not transparent as light-reflecting thermal insulation is visible through the outer layer of glass. The glass panes are set into a simple frame structure reminiscent of hothouse structures and sealed with black rubber gaskets. The regular pattern of rectangles breaks down the scale of the large glazed façade.

The building envelope provides an ideal surface for the artistic design of the façade: each pane of glass is printed with a 1 m high black letter (font type design by Karel Martens). The letters form a poem that was commissioned by the client. As there is neither a conceivable start nor end to the text and no punctuation, the poem is surreally ambiguous. The building turns into a piece of writing, and the subtle play of the letters’ changing shadows on the white membrane surface give the façade a lively depth. Through a refined use of material and suitable construction methods, Neutelings Riedijk have managed to turn an ordinary brief for an industrial building into a smart and stunning work of architecture – literally a “poetic building”.

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Originally published in: Jürgen Adam, Katharina Hausmann, Frank Jüttner, Industrial Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.