Space Encounters Office for Architecture

A spaceship that seems like it is about to lift off, fleeing the boring concrete and brick boxes of industrial park Isselt in Amersfoort. This is how the design for the Dutch headquarters of SF Fläkt, a Swedish producer of heating and ventilation technology, was described upon completion in 1973. After twenty years of vacancy, the building is being renovated and transformed by Schipper Bosch into Refläkt, bringing the futuristic-looking building back to life and providing office space for local start-up and scale-up companies. With the design of the transformation by Space Encounters both the interior and exterior of the triangular core will be updated, as well as the ground floor and roof landscapes.

Space Encounters also made a design proposal for the ground floor extension containing a generous entrance, reception desk, technical spaces and a small lunch-restaurant. The modest extension builds on the design by Gerssen, yet has a distinct character of its own consisting of a collage – or rather assemblage – of colourful elements: dark grey tiles for the walls, mint-green and dark blue aluminium window frames, a bright yellow roof plate and a bike parking covered by corrugated aluminium roof panels supported by distinct white steel frames.

The original design for Refläkt was the first solo project of architect Peter Gerssen, after having worked at the office of famed postwar architect Hugh Maaskant. The three silver, aluminium-clad cylinders are connected by a triangular core and together stand on 21 stilts in a pond that was part of an ecological recreational terrain annex car park. The sculptural and innovative design is built with a high level of prefabrication, consisting of 380 prefabricated concrete pie-shaped floor elements and 380 curved facade elements, as well as 17 prefabricated columns. This reduced the building time to ten months.

Sustainability was part and parcel of the design of the building. Its cylindrical shapes form the optimal ratio between volume and facade surface, of which only 20% consists of slim horizontal windows at eye level when sitting behind a desk. Sunscreens of a fine bronze mesh could be lowered in front of the windows without obstructing the view towards outside while keeping the building cool in summer together with the aluminium ‘heat-shield’. The building was outfitted with automatic climate control, a ventilation system that was integrated into large circular lamps, of which the lighting could be regulated individually, a closed water cooling system, and a quiet, integrated vacuum system that allowed for cleaning by day so that the building could be “turned off” at night.