This new building had become a recognisable beacon on the edge of the city of Assen. The building accommodates several emergency services such as a firestation, the Area Health Authority and the Safety Region Drenthe. Together with the Koopmans Bouwgroep, VVKH won the design & build competition. The new building is compact, sturdy looking and radiates preparedness for an emergency. All functions have been placed under a single roof, organised around a central atrium. From the atrium there’s a view on the court yard where fireman are practicing. The firetrucks are stationed around the court yard, ready to tear out. Offices are concentrated on the higher floors overlooking the highway A28. The building has a very high sustainability-rating (Dutch GPR-score 8,0).
| Architects | Gerrit-Jan van Rijswijk |
| Employees | Thomas Gillet |
A former Mercedes showroom is rebuild to become the regional ambulance station. From here thirteen ambulances are ready to tear out in an emergency. On top of the existing showroom an new building with offices and a hightech trainingcenter is oriented at the a busy railwayline. The new part is a sturdy building with overhanging balconies which provides shade in summer and window cleaning. In the front facade, at the Vondellaan, a small ambulance museum is created.
House Hilde lies on the dunes, on the tourist route between Station Castricum and dunes. The building opened in January 2015 and combines a depot with a museum function. The archaeological center is named Hilde, a woman from the fourth century AD and found in 1995 during an excavation in Castricum.
Hilde house was commissioned by the Province of North-Holland. Every Dutch province is responsible for the preservation and exhibition of archaeological finds within its borders. The old depot of North Holland in Wormer was too small, the climate was bad manageable and it was only limited accessible to visitors. The building on the Zanderij in Castricum offers plenty of space for storage and exhibiting archaeological finds and collections.
Hilde house has a floor area of 4,480 m2 and is divided into a pavilion and an underground depot. The building is designed with the surrounding landscape. The draft refers to an old dune landscape (so called “nollen” landscape) that is much older than the current shifting sand dunes and can still be found at various places in North-Holland. In the aboveground elongated pavilion on the one side the main entrance, with desk, museum shop, and a space for temporary exhibitions, cloakroom and toilets are situated, on the other side the office staff. On the first floor is a small restaurant with terrace and auditorium. The elongated shape and the 70-meter roof of the building refer to the early medieval farms, as they have been in the area. The curved roof structure is finished with Corten steel sheeting as a reference to thatched farms. The large overhangs of the roof protect the interior from direct sunlight, which allows the use of large glass surfaces. The façade is decorated with stone from Morocco, fossil pintail squid in it, a reference to the archaeological feature of the building. This stone also comes back into the interior.
The depot is about 2,200 m2 and is divided into several archives and the centrally located exhibition space. The hilly “nollen” landscape is, as it were, pulled over the depot. By placing a meter of sand on top of this part of the building a stable climate is achieved in a passive way and only limited installations are necessary in order to maintain a constant temperature and humidity in the depot. By putting strong in design and construction on sustainability House Hilde has an average score of 8.6 on the sustainability label. In addition, the integration of buildings with the landscape certainly has a symbolic value: in the ground is the best place to preserve archaeological treasures.
In the old wharf cellars at the intersection of the Oude and Nieuwe Rijn in the center of Leiden is the café restaurant "Annie's". We designed a curved floating terrace on behalf of the owner of the restaurant.
On the east side of Enschedé, on the outskirts of the city center lies the Miro shopping centre. The former mall has gradually been replaced by new buildings and was worn out. The new building has a curved façade and a large canopy. It embraces the public space and the high-quality parking facility. The shopping facade ends on the east side in a shopping arcade, which contains a large supermarket. On the west side the arcade accumulates into a two storey development. Together with public buildings on the other side of the road the building forms a port that marks the transition from the green suburban neighbourhood to the city itself. The complex includes a green roof that connects on the east end to an ecological zone for butterflies and bats.
