JOOLZ has a strong ideological agenda when it comes to responsible entrepreneurship. With Space Encounters, we won the pitch to translate their core value, positive design, into their new headquarters in a former machine factory building.

Their new office in the developing part of Amsterdam Noord measured 1600 m2 and consisted of a spacious industrial hall, and a generic office building, the latter regrettably obscuring all the character of the former. To remedy, we removed all the walls from the ground floor. Creating large openings in the office building’s facade further scraped away the generic mediocrity while allowing the passerby an unobstructed view of the hall. We placed the new glazing at an angle to — in line with the brand’s beliefs — improve transparency.

By far the biggest intervention is three, lavish gardens filled with trees, plants and fish in a pond. Jutting up to three existing roof lights, they echo the scale and the integrity of what was already there. These large-scale gardens carry he added benefit of improving the internal climate and provide employees with some more exotic choices to pick as their work location for the day.