Head office Capgemini | Ibelings van Tilburg architecten

Sound-damping highway architecture 
Directly next to the A2 highway, one of The Netherlands main highways, a continuous sound-barrier is build existing out of office buildings. It protects the residential area laying behind it against the noise of the A2 highway. Capgemini’s new office building fills in the most southern part of this sound barrier, right next to a public train station.

The office is built between the busy A2 highway and the more urban street scaled Reykjavikstaat. For the purpose of the sound-damping function the overall height of the building is at least 20 meters. The structure of the building consists of two rectangular volumes of 172 meters long and 16.2 m wide with three transverse spans of 14.4 m wide. In the middle between these floors remain four open spaces; a courtyard, a patio, an atrium and an entrance hall.

Two faced
The building has two different faces, the ‘highway facade’ and the ‘city facade’. The ‘city facade’ is a classical facade. The facade facing the highway has a more dynamic appearance with long horizontal lines. The three transverse spans in the floor plan show themselves by a brace shaped detail in the facade. These accents give rhythm in the strong horizontally articulated facade.

The main entrance is located on the square, facing the railway station. The main entrance is spatially connected to the atrium on the first floor, which includes the restaurant and overlooks the highway.