Redevelopment headquarters Essent

In 1956 the P.N.E.M., the electricity company serving the province of Noord-Brabant, built its headquarters on Willemsplein, a square in the south of Den Bosch. Designed by the architect C.H. de Bever, it is a typical example of traditional Delft School architecture. With its sloping roofs, turrets and clock towers, the building resembles an abstract castle. Since then, the P.N.E.M. has merged into Essent, a company whose sectors include energy, telecommunications and waste processing. In view of Essent`s wish to combine its services at Willemsplein, the company held an invited competition among three architectural practices to develop ideas to renovate and considerably expand the building. An obvious strategy would have been to design a new offi ce building next door to the “castle”. This option was abandoned however as it would make discontinuity between the former P.N.E.M. and the new company the keynote of the design. Besides, the castle would then contain the public, representative components of the programme leaving the new addition as the work building. Instead it was decided to weave the original component and the extension into a single complex, slotting the old building logically into the whole.
The basis of the design is the “mainstreet”, a linear zone that connects the castle to the new wings. Here is the beating heart of the complex where employees and visitors meet, for which purpose all lift cores are placed right up against the mainstreet. All communal areas are reached from this zone too. A special feature is the meeting room suite with restaurant housed in the old building. Its inner court is transformed into a glass-roofed atrium to serve as a foyer for the surrounding meeting rooms. The result is a supremely compact and harmonious whole under the same roof, with no distinction between old and new.