As a government building, the new Justice Office in Zaanstad, a municipality half an hour’s drive north of Amsterdam, had to balance the need for security with a sense of openness and connection to its surroundings. It also had to incorporate a program that varied from carpeted office spaces to far harder-wearing training areas and a secure vehicle garage.
courtyards,” complementing the natural wood and green-toned bio-based clay plaster on the walls.
The result is a low-slung structure, with a louvred facade, composed of four distinct volumes “connected and separated” by three enclosed “light courtyards.” Filled with plants, and featuring a mature tree and covered balcony in one of the volumes, these sunlight-bathed atria act as areas for socializing and spontaneous encounters — spaces where the building’s occupants can immerse themselves in the “polder” landscape outside.
Tracts of lowland reclaimed from the sea during the construction of dikes, polders are ubiquitous across the Netherlands. “Over centuries of land reclamation and drainage, the landscape has been shaped by peat extraction, water management and the characteristic strip-parcel pattern of peat meadows,” explains Jeroen Steenvoorden, founder of Amsterdam-based , the practice behind the design of the Justice Office.
These natural patterns became the inspiration and guiding structure for the project’s landscape design and spatial logic, and in turn that of its architecture. “We positioned the courtyards on the structural lines of the underlying polder landscape,” Steenvoorden continues. “In the extension of each courtyard, a wadi, or drainage system, guides rainwater through the site toward the peat lake next to it.” In a future scenario where more space is required, the sequence of modules subdivided by courtyards could easily be extended longitudinally by another module or more.
The walls, floor slabs and substantial cantilevers of the office volumes were all constructed entirely out of CLT; internally, the visible structural timber has been used to great effect, adding warmth, acoustic comfort and character — especially in the courtyards, where the glulam beams and columns become a prominent design feature offset by the different textures and hues of the zinc and subtly reflective bio-based green clay plaster on the walls.
Amid this muted and earthy palette, there are bursts of bright colour — in the pantry spaces, for example — making them easier to identify. “Meet me in the green kitchen,” you might say to a colleague, or “Meet me next to the blue pantry.” The possibilities in this thoughtful, human-centred project are endless.
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