Shaken Office, Groningen, Netherlands

November 22, 2010 Category: Commercial Building, Office

The Shaken Office located in Groningen, Netherlands, was designed by zerodegree architecture. The brief for this project spoke of ‘two buildings of impressive architecture; an identical set of floor plans, with spaces to be rented from 15 minutes to 15 years on limited resources, for office and scientific laboratory uses. The design aims to ‘open up’ the space to many more individuals than usual offices. What kind of ‘experience’ should this building offer?

Travellers passing Shaken Office on the highways see no building detail, only the monolith; two similarly proportioned sculptural volumes with large cantilevered floors. One feels gravity there. In doing so the architects added a mode of ‘experience’ to the functionalist architecture. Subtle differences in height – 3.6 metres for the office, 4.25 metres for lab ? has become the key to expressing individual experiences. The concept of stacked-up boxes obviously brought places of different sizes that can house diverse dimensions. For this the architects needed one pattern of space organisation for all floor plans. They use this principle to create one neat construction principle that requires minimum material use.

Shaken Office design by Exterior 1