ZLTO head office, ’s-Hertogenbosch

The new head office for the Southern Netherlands division of the Dutch Federation of Agricultural and Horticultural Organisation (ZLTO) is a clubhouse where employees and visitors are welcomed by a sense of homecoming. The building gives the ZLTO a modern public face that alludes to waving cornfields and barns but is at the same time a state-of-the-art, representative office building: an embassy for agriculture. This office building interlinks two agricultural colleges on the corner of the Onderwijsboulevard and the western tangent of Den Bosch’s ring road, thus establishing a food and health campus.

The compact volume offers a high degree of flexibility with a diversity of column-free office spaces. Setting the airy stairwells immediately behind the front elevation provides visual contact between all the floors, spacious zones that also serve as informal meeting spaces. The building’s clubhouse atmosphere is enhanced by the expressive, timber roof composition in combination with the curving, vertically oriented bands of fenestration.

ZLTO and de Architekten Cie. made every effort to approach the assignment with sustainability in mind, devoting much thought to safety, energy efficiency and the working environment. Limiting the window openings on the southern elevation avoids excessive solar warming and, along with several technical measures, reduces energy consumption.