EDGE Eindhoven

The client for the office building, EDGE Eindhoven, wanted to be able to offer big office spaces. The challenge was how to create these large floor spaces while avoiding a long, solid-looking building. Our approach was to find ways to visually break up the mass. Instead of a single volume, we created three staggered volumes for a playful effect. We connected these volumes with two transparent elements, to add further lightness to the design, as well as abundant daylight. One of the volumes is a transparent office zone, while the other is an atrium which forms part of the route from the station to the River Dommel, and is publicly accessible during the day. The natural landscape and the building façades simply continues through the atrium. EDGE Eindhoven is opened up to the local community with this intervention.

A further consideration for the office design was flexibility. Rather than a single core, the office building has three. This makes the design inherently versatile – it can be rented out as a whole floor, as part of a floor, or even as one of the three distinct volumes, since each one has its own core.

The rather noisy location, next to a railway line, determined our design for EDGE Eindhoven. The office building is placed next to the train line, so that it acts as a sound buffer for the residential tower, which is placed on the opposite side of the site. The tower typology ensures that every apartment benefits from ample daylight.

For the office, we created a similarly distinctive façade that contrasts with, yet complements, that of the residential tower. Here we used a classic, rather severe, grid to signal the building’s corporate function. Huge windows on the ground floor and top floor give the building a defined crown and plinth and a finished look. The window frames are elaborate, channelling those used to frame artworks. Again, aluminium in dark green, bronze and black brings the sculptural elements of the façade to life.

By creating bold façades with high contrast, graphic patterns, shining materiality and alternations of solid and transparent surfaces, we created an exciting building with an iconic presence on the city skyline. Thanks to its design and finishing, The Edge is an eyecatcher when seen from far away, and an enjoyable as well as functional building to experience up close.

EDGE Eindhoven is designed to be sustainable and to boost wellness among those who live and work in it. It aims to achieve both BREEAM Excellent (sustainability) and WELL Core & Shell Gold (wellbeing) certifications. Our office client EDGE Eindhoven specialises in smart offices with high standards of wellness and sustainability, and this one will be no exception, with climate ceilings, abundant daylight and ventilation, as well as social functions including meeting spaces, a restaurant and a gym, and access to nature through the atrium and landscaped passageway.