Benthem Crouwel Lab, Amsterdam
The office Benthem Crouwel
Architects operate from is discovered midway along the railway line from
Amsterdam Central Station to Schiphol
Plaza, below the approach
route of lane 22-04, in
a business park off the A10 orbital road. These are spacious premises, with a
concrete construction common to industrial buildings of the seventies; using
the simplest architectural means and a welter of state-of-the-art technology
they have been primed to receive an architects’ studio. On the ground floor are
workshops, a restaurant, archives and a garage. The studio itself, the meeting
rooms and computer bays are on the first floor ranged around a roof garden. A
long entrance hall entirely clad in zinc-coated steel panelling thrusts its way
through the building. In this hall, used for holding exhibitions, giving talks
and making presentations, is a central stair stitching all the Lab’s spaces
together. The interior of the studio is an open area of scattered
‘work-islands’, thus reflecting the structure of the practice, where the work
is done in flexible project teams.
Client
Benthem
Crouwel Architekten
Architect
Benthem
Crouwel Architekten
Gross
floor area
1700
m²
Start
design
1998
Start
construction
1998
Completion
1999
