Transparency in a high-security office environment
The new premises of Eurojust in The Hague is a welcoming and secure office building with a conference centre. Silo developed a subtle graphical layer that balances transparency and privacy.
Client
Eurojust and Heijmans
Partners
Architect: Mecanoo and Royal Haskoning DHV
Judicial cooperation to fight cross-border crime
Eurojust is the EU-judicial cooperation unit dealing with cross-border crime. The twelve-story building, designed by Mecanoo architects and Royal HaskoningDHV, lies semi-submerged in an undulating dune landscape. Daylight penetrates the building through the many windows in the façade and the interior’s glass partition walls.
Diversity and unity
The Eurojust building has more than four hundred workplaces and accommodates the national representatives of the EU Member States and three non-EU countries, supported by an administrative department. The diversity of cultures requires a spatial identity that makes everyone feel at home and expresses the organisation’s collective mission.
Connecting countries
Because of the security regulations, avoiding direct views into the offices and meeting rooms is essential, without blocking daylight or negating the sense of openness. For the many glass partition walls, we developed a series of patterns based on the idea of connecting countries through law and language. The abstract patterns stem from the different European landscapes and the treaty texts on which cooperation in the EU is founded.
Balancing privacy and transparency
In collaboration with the main contractor Heijmans, the design has been realised in two layers of film: a graphical layer on the corridor side and a privacy layer inside the offices and meeting rooms. Variations in the density of the patterns and alternating translucency of the film ensure an optimal balance between privacy and transparency, depending on the use of the space.
