The new residence for the Advisory Service for Geo-information and ICT in Delft, the Netherlands, seems austere and closed on the outside. Internally however it is spectacularly spacious and transparent. The entirely transparent central hall with its meticulously detailed elevators and staircases is one of the highlights in Dutch high-tech architecture.

Because Hans van Heeswijk architects designed the building inside out, the building becomes lighter, opener and more transparent towards the inside. The external facades on the building line have a rather closed character (25% glass). The two big “bites”that are taken out on either side of the rectangular building volume on the other hand are mainly materialized in glass (75%). At the central core, were floors are taken out to create two large voids, the facades are entirely glass (100%) and you can see through the building diagonally.

Not just in the facades, also in the interior of this office building, glass is used to illustrate and reinforce the flexibility and openness of the dynamic organization that uses it. A game is played with the properties of the material: coolness, transparency and reflection. These are influenced by the use of light and contrasted by the use of warm and closed material.