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ING
Group Headquarters |
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 Hans Ibelings "ING Group Headquarters, Amsterdam. Meyer en Van Schooten Architecten" NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2003 pp116, €39,50 acquista il libro online! |
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Il prossimo giovedì 12 giugno, presso il SESV
dell'Università degli Studi di Firenze alle ore 15.00, si terrà l'incontro
'Tra Olanda e Italia. Media and architectural waves through Europe'.
L'iniziativa, cui prenderanno parte Hans Ibelings, Luigi Prestinenza
Puglisi e Marco Brizzi, si svolgerà intorno ad un confronto tra le dinamiche
causate dalle relazioni tra architettura ed editoria nei due Paesi.
Lo stato della ricerca, quello della pratica professionale, le reali
modificazioni prodotte sul territorio saranno oggetto di un'indagine
tesa all'individuazione dei flussi mediatici che serpeggiano attraverso
le diverse realtà europeee. Il volume dedicato da Ibelings al progetto
ING Group Headquarters ad Amsterdam di Meyer e Van Schooten si presta
in questo senso all'analisi di una fase di passaggio per l'architettura
Olandese. Ne proponiamo, per l'occasione, un estratto ai lettori. |
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The streamlined object by Meyer en Van Schooten, which houses the executive
division of the ING banking and insurance group, is not just an eye-catching
corporate logo on a high visibility site beside the motorway. It is
also a building that offers ING Group an opportunity to model itself
according to the architecture. The corporation has embraced the transparency
of this building as an expression of its own organization and of that
organization's place in society. The innovative nature of the architecture
has likewise been internalized by the concern. Yet the building is more
than a corporate statement or metaphor. It is more particularly a milestone
in Dutch architecture. The ING Group's head office is in many respects
a building without peer thanks to the spectacular appearance, the ingenious
melding of form, construction and technology, the quality of the detailing
and the unique spatiality. This last aspect is certainly not the first
thing that strikes one in this headquarters, the architecture of which
is first and foremost form, then surface and only thereafter space. The building can be seen as the culmination of a period of prosperity during the 1990s. (Meyer en Van Schooten were awarded the commission in early 1998 after an invited competition among four Dutch architectural practices at the end of the previous year. The building was inaugurated in September 2002.) Dutch architecture did well out of that prosperity, not only because a lot of buildings were constructed, but also because clients were especially receptive to architectural experiment. The ING Group head office is a perfect example of architecture commissioned during the erstwhile economic boom when there was undeniably greater scope for innovation and experiment than would have been possible in periods of stagnation or recession.  At present, ING House is an solitary object in the urban landscape, but over the course of the next twenty years it will gradually become an integral part of the Zuidas (South Axis), a large-scale metropolitan development combining business centre, residential area and infrastructural node. ING is itself a major investor in this project. It is a token of the bank-insurer's confidence in the area's future that it should have established an outpost here. It also augurs well that the architectural quality of this outpost far outstrips that of existing office buildings for bankers, accountants and solicitors in this district, which, having been designed in accordance with prevailing stereotypes of these professional groups, are characterized by architectural caution. Although the first thing people notice about ING House is the Thunderbid-futurism of the form, the greatest qualities of this architecture are concealed beneath that expressive, streamlined shape: in the radical extrapolation of the complex motorway location, in the ingenious synthesis of construction, technology and spatial organization, in the outstanding detailing and finishing (certainly by Dutch standards) and in the timeless quality of light, space and transparency. Should the distinctive and dashing form ever become dated – which is not unthinkable, since it is undoubtedly the most stylish and thus time-bound aspect of the building – the other qualities of this architecture may well emerge with their timelessness enhanced. |
[03jun2003] | |||
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 The amorphous shape of the office building is both highly conspicuous and all but invisible, depending on the angle and time of day at which the building is viewed. Whether one sees it as a pronounced shape or no more than a nebulous envelope around a collection of rectangular spaces and openings, is a matter of interpretation. By day it has a pronounced form from nearly every angle; at night the streamlined carapace dematerializes, revealing the component parts. A comparable effect occurs during the day when passers-by in car, train or metro find themselves at right angles to the long side of the building. All at once, the view through the building is total and the envelope momentarily dissolves. The architecture opens up and becomes diaphanous, drawing attention to the huge voids in the building. The layered transparency that determines the experience in nearly every corner of the building is suddenly made manifest. From the motorway this streamlined object presents a striking figure, especially for motorists travelling from west to east. The gleaming nose, the ascending roofline and the graceful way the aluminium belly curves and becomes glass, are all seen to best advantage here. It is this view of the building that dictated the public image of this architecture long before it was built and that gave rise to a string of nicknames – dustbuster, slap-skate, shoe and bullet train. For motorists driving in the opposite direction, the building's shape –by day at least– is indefinable, solid and impenetrable. The same lines that from the other direction impart tension and dynamism to the building, from this direction render it indeterminate and inert. The resulting image is every bit as spectacular, even if it is at variance with the building's logo-like reputation. The outward form is in large part dictated by the complexity of the site. The building was raised on legs so that employees would not be condemned to a view of the motorway embankment. This had the added advantage of enabling the architects to place the entrance underneath the building, an eminently practical solution given the narrowness of the plot. There is nothing arbitrary about the ascending roofline either. It follows an imaginary line from the ground plane to the top of the office tower of a rival bank a little further along. Even the double facade is justified by the location. The high noise levels on the motorway side, combined with an unwillingness to consign users to a hermetically sealed building, culminated in this double skin which allows people to open a window without being bothered by traffic noise or draughts.  Starting from the bottom, the building consists of an underground car park, a double-height reception hall on the ground floor between the building's legs, a building services floor in the belly of the building and eight office floors, the top three of which are reserved for the ING Group's executive board and committees. At various places throughout the building huge cut-outs have been made, for a foyer with a garden of fig trees and ferns on the third floor, for two atria that cut through the building from top to bottom, for a jungle garden on the fourth, a palm house on the sixth and a patio with pine trees on the eighth floor. The eighth floor also boasts a large roof terrace and, on the south side in the cavity of the double-skin facade, a bougainvillea garden that reaches all the way up to the tenth floor. In addition, the building contains offices, meeting rooms, an executive dining room and a staff restaurant and, in the nose, an auditorium. Virtually any building can be described as an object, but not many buildings project such a strong object quality as this all-round structure. Its elevated position makes it one of those rare creatures, a building with a genuine underside, a gently rounded belly that is worthy of the name. ING House is a supermodern object, autonomous and aloof yet at the same time perfectly at home in this unusual site. Because the building is raised, it distances itself from its surroundings, but this very fact also renders it highly visible. The building rises above the infrastructural cluster of motorway, railway, metro track and dedicated bus lane that sweeps past it and its spectacular form becomes part of the motorway experience. Hans Ibelings |
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| Excerpts from the book ING Group Headquarters, Amsterdam. Meyer en Van Schooten Architecten, by permission of the author. | ||||
| > MEYER EN VAN SCHOOTEN ARCHITECTEN | ||||
