The new main building of the European Patent Office (EPO) is a slab with a height of 107 meters (27 floors) and a total area of 85,000 m2. There are jobs for 1950 employees: they have moved there from a dilapidated and obsolete tower next door intended for demolition (90% of the materials of the old building after dismantling will go to road construction or will be otherwise reused).
When the tower is completely dismantled, in 2020 a reservoir with an area of more than 16 thousand m2 will be created around the new building, in which it will be reflected and "dissolve" - on a par with the sky. The theme of reflection and dissolution has become a key theme for the project: the building will change its appearance depending on the weather and time of day, under certain lighting it will be washed out in the atmosphere saturated with moisture. The flat terrain and the huge sky, as well as the proximity of the sea, inspired Nouvel to create a seemingly permeable mirror for this changing landscape, opposing natural forms with "complete geometric abstraction."
The layout of the new building combines individual offices and spaces for collaboration, in an additional building at ground level there are meeting rooms for reviewing patents filed by inventors and their lawyers (there are about three thousand of them a year), meeting rooms, part of the restaurant hall for employees and an atrium with winter garden.
The space between the two layers of the facade is landscaped: three hundred species of plants are planted in 198 boxes, each 8.5 meters long. The roof is also landscaped, over which, in addition, a canopy with 825 m2 of solar panels is installed. Other environmental components of the project include a thermal energy storage in an aquifer, 16,000 LED lamps, which will save about 430,000 kWh per year, extensive use of natural lighting, etc.
The frame used 10,000 tonnes of steel, making the new EPO building the largest structure of this quality made of this material in the Netherlands.
