The Rabobank Maastricht wanted a new headoffice. A service centre where all financial products could be offered to their clients. Business financing, savings accounts, mortgages etc. Various establishments from the area decided to fuse into one new organization. I have been asked to design the building for this organization. The location: one of the last spots on the famous Sfinx-ceramiqueterrain, as part of a group of three office buildings to be developed. Our spot lies exactly on the head of the terrain. The management found a strong interaction with the employees to be very important. Casually there had to be opportunities to exchange thoughts, in the working place, at the copy machine, during a meeting, or at the lounge room. Because also the Rabobank, like many other innovative organizations, wanted an environment with flexible working places in diverse performances.
The most fitting building would be one with only one floor, so that different floor levels, above each other, would not frustrate a good interaction. But on this location, of course, there was not enough space to project the wanted 5000 square meters. My suggestion was to curl upwards the wanted floor space, staircase wise, in a way that all the working places would be connected. To create a far more spatial connection than only the curly spiral, I decided to perforate, vertically, the floor space on several sides, by making "vides", which truly generated an extra dimension. Thus, a totally visual spatial woven structure exists. Because of the square shape of the building, a lot of daylight penetrates into the building and allover, where ever you are in the building, you can see through the windows the surrounding exterior. Because of the staircase wise organization of the floor fields, - each time a floor level jumps 0,87 meter higher-, on the ground floor as well as on the upper level, a fascinating spatial spectacle is created.
The building is colored monochrome. Only brown tints, variating from brown brass to rye bread brown. The explicit combination of this brown brass and this rye bread brown is best manifested in the elevations of the exterior, with the contrast of the window profiles and the bricklaying. The building is made of brick, in a flag link figure. Without visual laying joints the bricks are piled up with thin wet mortar in rigid patterns that, in combination with the drawing of the brown brass profiles, show a jumping geometric composition. Through this the building presents itself as a elegant and, in another way, tough sculpture. Some "real" colors you can find inside the building on the crossings of the corridors. Transparent floor bricks are enlightened by different colors as yellow, bleu, green and red. The concrete center of the building is decorated by the artist Marc Mulders, who I invited because of his famous "use of color", in this case painted on beautiful glass objects.
Two outside terraces are there. A covered one, on the south side, and an other one at the top of the building on the north side with a beautiful view over Maastricht.
Thus a building is created with a continuum of space in which the so beloved collegiality can flourish in optima forma.
In 2010, Han Westelaken, projectarchitect, won with this project the prestigious Victor de Stuers Price.
