I was in the Netherlands last week and visited Interpolis’ head office in Tilburg. Inside a non-descript building various Ducth designers have transformed a home-like workspace or a work environment that feels like home. The basis for the design is a concept that Interpolis developed with Veldhoen + company. Interpolis’ work environment is based on a concept called Helder Werken (to work in a clear and transparant way) and is not limited to the workspace only but also incorporates the way the staff communicate among themselves as well as with their clients.

The whole office is completly free address, for the 2600 employees only 1600 workplaces have been installed. The reasoning being that most of the staff anyway spend considerabe time away from their desks anyway either in meetings, at their clients offices or working from home. A number of employees spend a few days working from home. Being a completely free address office, the staff decide to work wherever they feel the space can support their working needs for the day. This could be a brain storming environment, a more formal meeting area, a group or team space or a more isolated “cockpit” , a tiny private office to do some concentrated work. The project started in 1995 and in 2003 a new element called Tivoli was added. Interestingly the various themes of the recent addition, although radically different in design outlook, all follow the same principles as the rest of the office. The brief asked to create spaces that would be very different in look and feel so that the staff could select to work in their favourite environment. Marcel Wanders, Atelier van Lieshout, Piet Hein Eek, Jurgen Bey, Irene Fortuyn, Mark Warning, Ellen Sanders and Bas van der Tol all created very atmospheric and radically differrent environments loosely scattered around a long narrow space on the 2nd floor of one of the office wings. It seems that Kick van der Pol, Interpolis’ CEO likes to work in Marcel Wanders’ Stone House, a collection of organically shaped rooms. My ambassador, one of Interpolis’ staff who volunteered to show me around, preferred to work in Atelier van Lieshout’s Garden House. The very different design means that there is something for everyone and every occasion. Some meeting rooms are more for interviews (dimmed light, comfy chairs) while other are more intimidating. However there are also spaces that are not popular such as the one created by Piet Hein Eek which has been redesigned recently and will be open soon. Following the logic of Veldhoen + company that space should be used in the economic way possible: space wasted is money wasted. Interpolis shows that office design and alternative space use are a process rather than a final product.