Centraal Beheer, Apeldoorn Herman Hertzberger, 1967, 1970-72

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Designed for a Dutch insurance company, this complex is basically an office building housing 1,000 people in a suburban setting. Its program also includes a restaurant, day care center, classrooms, coffee bars, and roof terraces. Its ground floor is designed to work as a public street with main entrances connecting various parts of the neighborhood. Parking is located at the lower levels. 

Site plan. Apeldoorn is a small town on a main railway line 50 miles east of Amsterdam.

The building consists of a basic structure, which manifests itself as an essentially fixed and permanent zone throughout the building, and a contemporary variable and interpretable zone.  The basic structure and the interpretable zone in their entirety thus await complementary filling in while remaining essentially the same: the building as a whole derives its identity from the complex of different interpretations.

The building can be considered as having four quadrants divided by internal streets crossing at right angles. The north, west and south quadrants contain office working spaces; the east quadrant comprises restaurant, educational spaces, crèche and a large roof terrace.

In the building's central area are sitting areas, coffee bars and conference rooms. Office staff go to a coffee bar as often as they wish; coffee is no longer carried into work areas at fixed hours. The internal streets across the center of the building are public. Mother with her children may walk in to meet father; they may have a drink together or, as many families do, lunch together in the restaurant. This openness is intended to break down conventional barriers between work and home, public and private, building and street.