A new building, named after the Belgian writer Hermann Teirlink, who wrote in Flemish, has appeared in the former industrial zone Tour & Taxis, which is now undergoing a transformation: new housing, innovative office buildings appear on 12 hectares (about one of them we wrote here), a large park, the historic Royal Warehouse, Post Office, Customs, etc. are being adapted for new uses.
The building of Hermann Teirlink is located next to the Royal Warehouse - they serve as a kind of gateway to the Tour-e-Taxi - and therefore is oriented towards it in terms of its height: it has six floors, which made it possible to create a more complex plan than in a high-rise building. However, there is also a dominant feature in the form of a 13-storey tower (60 meters).
The plan, reminiscent of a meander, allowed not only 2,600 employees to be accommodated in the building, but also spacious conservatories, which also act as atriums - sources of natural light, thermal buffers and recreational areas. In addition, another winter garden is located on the top floor of the tower. Office parts, 21 meters wide, accommodate workplaces closer to the edges, and in the center - stair-elevators and sanitary facilities, coffee zones. The project was developed in close cooperation with the government of Flanders and takes into account its current and future needs, since designed for transformation. The plan is based on a 7.2 m module.
The “street” on the ground floor unites public areas - this layout solution was borrowed from the Royal Warehouse. Along it there are a restaurant, a dining room, auditoriums, porter desks, an exhibition space, and a gym. Meeting rooms are located on the second floor around the central balconies, where the main staircases lead.
Among the eco-components of the project, in addition to winter gardens and natural lighting, are highly effective insulation of the shell, the use of recyclable materials in construction, limitation of glazing areas, a geothermal heating system and a room cooling system built into reinforced concrete floors, rainwater collection and solar panels. All in all, Hermann Teirlink's building is the largest “passive” office building in Belgium (66,500 m2).
A special theme is the integration of works of art into the project: the graphic artist Henri Jacobs made concrete reliefs for the architraves and railings of the stairs in the interior, Sophie Nys, Pieter Vermeersch and Aglaia Konrad designed ten large round shades with plant and mineralogical motives. Poetess Charlotte Van den Broeck composed a poem for the building's façade.
