We are not talking about building from scratch, but about renovating a completely new building: an industrial laboratory for the development of Unilever's Dijon mustard formulation. It was built in 2004 and closed in 2009 due to the crisis. Turning it into an ordinary office center was problematic due to its too wide dimensions: 40 mx 70 m.
The associated lack of natural light was addressed in part through feature selection. The call center of the French company Teletech, which has now opened there, experiences three rush hours per day: in the morning, in the afternoon and in the early evening. Only at these moments all 600 employees must be present there, so their workplaces may not meet the sanitary standards of an 8-hour working day.
Since mostly young people work there, the architects suggested that they be located in the building in the same way as they would work at home: lying on the floor, sitting in an easy chair or on a sofa - you can answer calls anywhere in the working area, just a laptop is on.
And when the influx of calls dies down, employees can move to “social” areas of the building: the gym, small business incubator, education center, or gallery. The project required courage from the client, who usually set up call centers in developing countries. The diversity of the program and the transformability of the space, combined with the large number of new jobs, is an excellent way to deal with the crisis. The economic situation also led to the cheapness of the project: most of the budget of 4 million euros went to the construction of the atrium, large windows, mezzanine floors, glazed openings in the ceilings. The remaining funds were enough only for the most necessary things, so the facade, for example, remained the same, it was only covered with a print in the form of a QR code, which serves as a "sign" for the call center.
MVRDV architects consider their project (total area 6,500 m2) as exemplary in the post-crisis period: there are many new buildings in Europe that do not need major reconstruction, but only an inexpensive and well-thought-out change of function, so the Dijon option would be useful for the population as well, and entrepreneurs.
N. F.
