Mateo Arquitectura

This coming 14 April sees the official opening of the new building for the head offices of PGGM insurance company in the municipality of Zeist (Utrecht, Holland). The event will be attended by the project architect, Josep Lluís Mateo, the Mayor of Zeist and the Board of Directors of PGGM.

This project addressed the need to increase the surface area of the existing building and recover the parkland in which it is set, while maintaining the relation between the construction and its setting. The result is a building that mimics its natural context, creating a visual and aesthetic harmony and integrating the existing building by making the most of its full potential.

Integration is achieved by means of the lightness and visual permeability of the materials used for the new building, ensuring that the visual relation between inside and outside is complete and direct.

The volume of the new building emerges as a layout in keeping with that of the original building. The pre-existing building was made up of different wings of offices that intersected, leaving a kind of cloister or “patio” between them. Continuing this logic, a new layout appears in the south of the site. This layout is configured by two large, elongated office wings, intersected by small connecting buildings that spatially connect the new with the existing.

Into the open space inside the existing building, a transparent volume is introduced, raised above ground level. The cross-shape of this volume is superposed and adapted to integrate and communicate with the surrounding buildings. The addition of this “patio building” is a functional solution to the long distances that existed in the original building.

The indoor space is designed to provide the flexibility required by contemporary corporate activity, offering spaces with multiple possibilities to allow workers to choose the place they work at all times according to their professional and personal needs. Work was also infused with a spirit of innovation at the service of sustainability, with systems of ventilation built into the false ceilings to filter outside air naturally and condition the various spaces. This represents a major energy saving and frees the building of the tubes and machinery that visually and acoustically interfere in the workers’ environment.

See more about PGGM here.