Space Encounters Office for Architecture

JOOLZ has a strong ideological agenda when it comes to responsible entrepreneurship. Space Encounters translated their core value, positive design, into their new headquarters in a former factory building in the Buiksloterham development in Amsterdam Noord. The factory building of 1600m² consisted of a spacious and characteristic industrial hall that was regrettably being obscured by the part with generic office spaces. To remedy this we removed all the walls from the ground floor and created large window openings to further scrape away the generic mediocrity, allowing passers-by an unobstructed view of the hall.

The new glazing was positioned at an angle to — in line with the brand’s beliefs — improve transparency. The biggest intervention was the introduction of three, lavish gardens filled with trees, plants and fish in a pond. Jutting up to three existing roof lights, they echo the scale and the integrity of what was already there. These large-scale gardens carry the added benefit of improving the internal climate, cast the interior in soft glowing daylight and provide employees with more exotic options as work locations.