Control Center Amerongen
A Diamond in the Landscape
Shimmering like a precious stone and symbolizing the flowing waters of the local river system, our Amerongen control center for waterway management gets its shine from a special coating of custom-made, diamond-shaped tiles which we specially engineered to catch and reflect the light.
Watery inspiration
Watery inspiration
Our water management control center in Amerongen is part of a huge project initiated by the Rijkswaterstaat – the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management in the Netherlands – in order to bring the system up to date and centralize its operations. Our building is a new addition to this system, which among other things protects the country against flooding. With such a function, we naturally looked to water itself as our design inspiration, creating a building with fluid lines and a façade that sparkles like light reflected by the surface of a river.
We wanted to make a building that 'flows' so we created a series of overhangs that gradually become bigger, mimicking pooling streams of water.’
Early sketch
Ground floor
First floor
Smooth and shimmering
Smooth and shimmering
We love overcoming detailing difficulties, and here they involved combining the rounded form of our building – resembling a rock in the river, its polished form worn smooth by water over time – with a covering of angular ceramic tiles. We wanted a truly glittering, reflective skin, and to achieve it we undertook the lengthy and demanding process of creating special ceramic tiles, combining these with polished aluminium for the entrance. To avoid the appearance of distracting black expansion joints on the facade, needed because of the materials expanding in warm conditions, we used transparent kit in a zig-zag pattern – our ingenious way of solving the expansion issue and creating a seamlessly smooth finish.
Shiny ceramic skin
