MVRDV: radio and television station in Hilversum, Netherlands
Project type
In the Nineties the Dutch station experienced repeated crises due to the rapid growth of new commercial and local stations. It therefore decided to leave its old location, divided among thirteen bungalows in Hilversum, and move into the city's broadcasting centre. The studios of other stations will be built around the VPRO building in years to come.
The new building is constructed on a hilly site, an unusual situation in Holland.
The MVRDV group has come up with a compact but very deep construction distributed over five floors: the aim is to reduce the building's impact on the surrounding environment to a minimum.
The building's compact construction offers a number of advantages; the deepest offices make the most of the common areas and permit considerable energy savings.
It follows that less space is required for plants, so that the remaining rooms can be used for other purposes: as meeting rooms, leisure and sports facilities, etc.
In the interiors MVRDV shuns all references to the traditional concept of the office: there are none of those interminable corridors opening onto a series of rooms, as the building grows out of the landscape like a sort of appendix, in which the layout may be adapted as desired. Every part of the building maintains contact with the outdoors: the big windows may be opened, and those on the ground floor are doors through which people may go outside.
The park and roof garden are wired with numerous cable TV, electrical, telephone and computer network connections, so that employees can work outside in the summer. All floors in the building are linked by stairways which may be used as stands, ramps and slides, so that the ceilings are at different heights and the rooms have different shapes.
The main entrance is located on the first floor, near a small parking garage, and offers access to the reception area on the second floor, in the heart of the building.
The raised position of the entrance is made necessary by the need to build another construction across from the VPRO building, so that transit will be on this level. The floor of the reception area is raised at the point where cars enter the garage, creating a rather marked rise in the floor.
Vehicles enter a sunken pit, so that the floor gradually becomes the ceiling, emphasising the concept of the building as a continuation of landscape. Even the patios are offset to offer a view of the surrounding landscape from all points, and there are open air spaces for special events.
This global approach permits increasingly evident differentiation of the interiors of the complex in a process similar to that of urban planning, supported by infrastructures and integrated with individual buildings.
The VPRO headquarters consists of a complex system of columns, quadrangular struts and load-bearing walls. Various types of glass are used in the façade, offering different light conditions inside.
Climate control and lighting comply with the minimum standard required by legislation; routes through the construction are not always linear, structured on different levels and sloping planes, and niches are formed in the gaps between various elements. Right from the start the intention was to transport most of the furnishings used in the old building to the new structure; the architects came up with a furniture purchasing plan anyway, clearly emphasising differentiation.
The MVRDV group designed the fixtures itself as well as the soundproofed chambers, the cabinets around the columns and a particularly refined coating for the neon lights.
Thus VPRO has not lost its identity, and the standard building has been subjected to a process of deconstruction aided precisely by the regulations.
Floriana De Rosa
Interview with Winy Maas
Link: http://www.vpro.nl
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