Discover Benelux | Top Architects in the Netherlands | Creating Quality of Life
Courthouse Zwolle. Photo: Ossip van Duivenbode.
Effective architecture is based on behavioural knowledge TEXT: EVA MENGER
Hootsmans architectuurbureau is an Amsterdam-based firm set up by Dutch architect Rob Hootsmans in 2006. While working for the Rjksgebouwendienst (Government Buildings Agency), Hootsmans – often in close collaboration with architects Daan Petri and Remco Bruggink – helped realise a number of great governmental projects. As Bruggink and Petri then decided to join Hootsmans architetuurbureau, the three have continued to work together on larger public projects, while also trying to remain versatile by taking on smaller-scale, commercial challenges every now and then. 60 | Issue 60 | December 2018
“The best thing about being an architect is that you never know what you’re going to come up with when you start a project,” Petri tells us. “Whether it’s the government or a commercial organisation, clients approach us with a challenge and certain requirements, and we always start our investigation by asking critical questions about the purpose of the building. The better we get to understand user-behaviour, the more impact we can have with our designs.”
Courthouse Breda One of the firm’s biggest, most recent projects is the courthouse in Breda. As it is a ‘public-private partnership’ project, it
was developed through a close collaboration between everyone involved, including contractors, facility service providers, designers and financial organisations. As a result, the courthouse has become a project of high societal value. As, in stark contrast to the past, most legal information is much more easily accessible to the public, the one very clear requirement that the government had for the building was that it should not be a closed bastion. “Courthouses are tense places by nature. People go there for specific, often nerve-wrecking reasons, which is why we felt it was important to soften the mood,” Petri explains. Instead of using architectural