Purmerend City Hall

Connecting people at Purmerend City Hall, Holland

Bringing the extent of networking to a greater level both inside and outside the organisation is the main idea behind the modified room architecture and choice of interior design at the City Hall in midsize Dutch municipality Purmerend. The beautiful but outdated five-storey building originally divided into small corridors with an endless number of office rooms for sure needed a thorough makeover.
Casper Schwarz architects were entrusted with developing and implementing a new concept encouraging communication, efficiency and collaboration. Focusing on creating larger rooms, natural routing and inevitable meetings between people in a very informal and non-mandatory setting, the workspaces are now divided into communicative areas, regular work areas and privacy areas. Switching from one area to another is easy and requires minimal effort as if any excuse not to flex around cooperating with colleagues is eliminated.
Several patterns from the Canvas Collage collection are specified for the project, for instance the Octo design that creates a graphic network connecting all workstations in a not too obvious but definitely visible way. Besides that, the collection adds a domestic look and feel to the office floors whilst also complementing the colour themes manifested in carpets, furniture upholsteries and acoustic elements. The carpet pattern is enlarged from the original design to create a harmonic and quiet surface. For the communications areas more bold designs from the Canvas Collage collection are specified certainly inviting people off their desks with more outspoken and vivid expressions.

The Canvas Collage collection
Canvas Collage is designed by Dutch interior designer Nicolette Brunklaus and the collection truly reflects her love of rich textile structures. A tiny sample of worn linen, loosely woven and faded, began Nicolette Brunklaus’ creative process of mapping textures, colours and memories. Canvas Collage is inspired by reflections on industry, just before the industrial revolution. Today, industry and efficiency have replaced this laborious craft yet Nicolette Brunklaus utilises its nostalgia by digitising it and collaging the linen texture in various modern ways. The woven structure is applied to all variations of the Canvas Collage collection, layered over dried dahlia flowers, in a patchwork of colours and combined with new forms. The collection represents five designs that can be integrated. Each of the designs stands alone beautifully and when combined they seamlessly interlace with each other to create an atmosphere of effortless comfort in a hotel, office or home.
The designs are unique and intimate with a strong graphic identity. Rewoven is a highly collaged design inspired by tapestries by Corbusier in Chandigarh, India. Each mixture of coloured layers forms a new pattern. Octo mixes a geometrical pattern with the rough expression of linen and brings a completely new look with an ambiguous feeling. Tradition is built up as a geometric grid with a twist in the colour combination transforming it to either a modern or a classical look. Linen reflects the woven structures of worn fabrics from long ago. The floral print Faded Dahlia illustrates the beauty of dried flowers that are photographed, abstracted and collaged in a rich realistic way and combined with the structure of linen.

Canvas Collage comes in seven qualities and is available as broadloom, corridors, runners and rugs.

Quote
We believe interior is an instrument to invite people to use the spaces and knowledge of their colleagues in an effortless way.
Casper Schwarz, Casper Schwarz architects

architect: Casper Schwarz, Casper Schwarz architects