The municipality of Alkmaar has a challenging goal. In 2021 she wants to become the most innovative 100,000+ municipality in the Netherlands. An organization development plan has been developed for this purpose, in which housing is mentioned as a means to achieve this objective. The plan states: “Creating a flexible, sustainable working environment that stimulates an efficient and effective way of working and that expresses and strengthens the identity of the organization”.

The employees of the municipality of Alkmaar are now working at various locations. With a radical renovation of the full back office of the municipal office at the Mallegatsplein, they will all be at the same location. After an extensive design competition, Proof of the Sum was selected on the basis of her vision ‘the power of magnetism’. A vision of how strengthening knowledge sharing between 600 employees should be central and how the building can  strongly facilitate in this.

The basis of the design is on the one hand an analysis of the strengths and challenges of the building. The elongated volume with its narrow construction depth and valuable east-west orientation is a strong starting point. The absence of interaction between the different building layers, the amount of entrances and the curvature of the building require special attention. By creating two large voids, making both facades tangible at every point in the plan and carefully positioning closed program components, a new attractive starting point is created.

On the other hand, careful attention was paid to the course of a working day of various employees. The largest common denominators of this working day are spread over the three layers of the back office. Network café, learning center, lockers, meeting facilities and hotspots are vertically spread throughout the building. As a result, every employee unconsciously uses the entire building one day, increasing exponentially the chance of encounter and synergy. Adjacent to these common areas, the primary and secondary workplaces are provided. In a mix of concentrated work, team spaces, touchdown zones, meeting facilities and spaces for agile work, the principles of Activity Based Working have been rolled out over more than 4,500 square meters.

Proof of the sum is responsible for the entire interior design from the architectural layout up to and including the loose interior, upholstery and graphics. The program of requirements has been developed by YNNO. The installation design and structural design have been developed by HE-adviseurs and WFO Bouwadvies respectively. The realization of the project has executed under the supervision of Verwol Complete Interieur Realisatie and the employees benefit their new innovative working environment since June 2018.