Description
“More than an extension, it is not quite a free-standing building,” says Stan Allen about the offices of the Dutch pension fund AZL. He is referring to an important characteristic, its quality of being “in-between,” for there is no one standpoint from which Arets’ building can be grasped. As at the cinema, it is the carefully composed cuts that bridge the imaginary space from one scene to the next that bring it alive. The cuts create new relationships for people and endow the connecting elements – the ramps, stairways and tilted planes – with a key function in the building’s design.
The expressive, uniform structure appearing to be suspended above a large, sunken square replaces the original AZL building almost entirely. Two of the old façades remain; they are directly attached to the new building, but this is not immediately evident to the visitor. A path curving past the former entrance leads to a new entrance level constructed of glass bricks. The entire building mass is raised so as to enable the unusual entrance from beneath. A sweeping stairway leads under the smooth grey lintel through a dark zone to the customer service area.
Blurred transitions dominate the design concept. One of these is the transition – only hinted at by a simple change of materials – from the public waiting area to the staff circulation zone where meetings with clients also take place. Another one is the ramp that forms the second access, squeezed into the gap between the customer service area and its outer wall to the southeast, seemingly entirely separate from it. In its continuation, the ramp becomes the exit to the conference room beneath the entrance hall, a sort of black box. Even the directors use this unconventional route, going past the kitchen of the staff café to reach the introverted conference room with its view onto a surreal concrete garden.
In contrast, there is a clean cut between the entrance building and the actual office wings. Grey-green carpet, translucent sliding partitions and storage units that also serve as sound-absorbing elements define the office area, which is reduced to the essentials. Group offices of varying sizes predominate; only directors and managerial staff have private offices. A second skin of thin stainless steel panels is perforated in such a way that it appears almost opaque from outside, but only like a veil from inside. This skin reveals neither the ceiling height nor the function of the rooms behind it. Its effect being that of a brise-soleil, it contributes to energy savings in the naturally aerated and ventilated building.
According to the architect, the new parts of the building were literally plugged into the old buildings and therefore integrated into the existing urban texture. The building, at first glance appearing merely functional, therefore reveals itself to be exceptionally complex.
Drawings
Site plan: With the construction of the building a new connecting axis was created in the urban fabric of Heerlen
Ground floor: Parts of the façades and the elaborate stairway are all that is left of the stately brick building and the structure behind it. The majority of the offices have been placed in the two wings of the building perpendicular to the entrance hall.
Section through the entrance ramp and the exit to the conference room
Section through the entrance hall with the conference room underneath and the staff cafe at the end
Photos
View of the long entrance hall, a connecting element between two parallel office wings, is suspended like a bridge over the sunken square
A variety of connecting elements, like this wide stairway, endow the building with an unexpected complexity
Originally published in: Rainer Hascher, Simone Jeska, Birgit Klauck, Office Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2002.