Villa VPRO

In 1997, the original 13 office buildings with recording studios on the Mediapark site in the city of Hilversum were replaced with a single structure - the VPRO villa. The original villas no longer met spatial requirements, but primarily the quality of the working environment. Regulations, investor demands, land restrictions, and the maximum height led to the deepest office building in the Netherlands. This problem was resolved with numerous notches and internal courtyards that allow natural light into all rooms. The building offers many different typologically distinct office spaces and is more compact. There are no long dark corridors, and the individual floors are connected by ramps, various offsets, and steps. The green roof provides not only a generous view of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision but also a pleasant seating area.
The floors are supported by a network of columns and stabilized by struts. The technical equipment is hidden in a hollow underground floor and in a system of vertical shafts. MVRDV replaced many originally used poor-quality materials in the villas with high-quality ones. Instead of prefabricated walls, stone is used, and inside, we find wood, plastic, steel, and quality carpets. Instead of small windows, there are large glazed surfaces, with the possibility of stepping out from every room onto a terrace, balcony, inner courtyard, or garden. The studios are lined with high-quality absorptive materials made of wood, coconut fibers, bricks, steel, and stone.
The facade of the building is very original. The original design was not accepted, thus it was replaced by the realized variant, where we find 35 different types of glass that vary in transparency, reflection hue, and color. As the authors stated: "The quality of the building is reflected in the different amounts of colored glass."