Typically, reconstruction and adaptation are referred to in relation to historical monuments, immediately the architects took up the transformation of a completely new building. The mustard laboratory of a renowned food manufacturer was built in 2004 and closed in 2009. Since then, the building has been empty, since it was impossible to make an office complex out of it due to its large width (size 40 mx 70 m).
The solution was to turn it into a call center, which is fully loaded (600 employees) only three times a day - in the morning, in the afternoon and in the early evening. The quality of jobs that are occupied only from time to time is more flexible than the standard 8-hour jobs, so the laboratory space was well suited for this function. However, the architects spent a very small budget to a large extent to still provide access to sunlight in the interior: they arranged a large window, openings in the roof and an atrium there. The workplaces themselves imitate "home" conditions: employees can sit on sofas and even on the floor - after all, they only need a laptop and headphones with a microphone to work. Zones of the center are divided into quiet, providing privacy or open: each employee can connect their computer anywhere.
In addition to the call center, the building houses an educational center, an art gallery and an "incubator" for new business projects. There will be a garage on the ground floor: no other purpose can be offered for this tier, since the building is located in a floodplain, where there is a great danger of flooding during a flood.
There were practically no funds left to decorate the facade, so the architects will cover it with panels with Flashcode (the French version of the familiar QR code), telling about the activities of Teletech. The MVRDV bureau sees in its project an example of an economical adaptation of an empty building for a different function, which can be used throughout Europe, where, due to the crisis, thousands of buildings of various purposes are empty (it would be expensive and not environmentally friendly to demolish them or completely rebuild them).
N. F.
