ARCHITECTUURGIDS.NL / ARCHITECTUREGUIDE.NL

HEADQUARTERS PTT

F.J. VAN GOOL (DE ARCHITEKTEN CIE.), 1983-1990, Stationsplein/Emmasingel, Groningen

ARCHITECT(URAL OFFICE):
Frans van Gool
de Architekten Cie.

ARTIST:
Per Kirkeby

BUILDING TYPE:
Office buildings

As the 1980s dawned, the government decided to move what was then the State Postal and Telegraph headquarters from The Hague to Groningen. Broadly speaking the complex consists of three parallel rows of offices, two low-slung and one tall. They are distorted to mate up with the surroundings; the tall row along the Emma Viaduct, for example, billows out either side of a kink halfway. At ground floor level the rows are linked by a layer of communal facilities and five floors up by footbridges. The uniform brick cladding and standard windows serve to unite the complex massing of volumes.