Amsterdam studio Sander Architecten designed cardboard meeting rooms inside a bank in the Netherlands.
An open plan with curved shapes and round enclosed spaces, creating an organic flow between spaces.
Since 2007, various disciplines have worked together very intensively to complete this new office where, from 2012, 6,000 people will work ‘unplugged’. The interior is based on the integral design vision Rabo Flow, developed by Sander Architects. In this, all starting points for the project have merged into one powerful whole: the Rabo Unplugged programme (which stands for abandoning rules, time and place), the architecture of the new building, the interior, the choice of materials and the art collection.
A rather unusual process was chosen with a single supervisor (Sander Architects) and co-designers. Basic principles and assessment criteria were laid down in an ‘urban design plan’, in which the focus was on unity in diversity. The result is a perfect example of the power of co-operative working. The whole has become more than the sum of its parts. The design provides confidence, inspiration and initiates new forms of personal interaction.
Giant cylinders of cardboard enclose the meeting rooms, timber screens shape and fill the common areas, translucent Japanese paper, Â along with springy lanterns and skylights create the puzzle of lights and cylindrical shapes that characterizes the Rabobank HQ.
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