Veemgebouw
by Caruso St John Architects
Client Trudo
Award RIBA International Awards for Excellence 2024
An innovative and joyful transformation of 1940s industrial storage in Eindhoven into an immense mixed-use modern urban building.
The Veemgebouw building is a unique example of reuse; the transformation of a brown brick warehouse built in 1943 Eindhoven, as part of the Phillips site.
A ground floor food market activates street level, and the nine floors above have had minimal intervention to accommodate a 600-space car park for the surrounding Strijp S Site, allowing public space to be freed-up from private cars.
An elegant office and residential roof-top extension joyfully complements the historic architecture, rhythmically echoing the building’s curved brick walls. A mews-like entrance in the sky has been created to the energy-neutral flats and maisonettes for affordable rent.
The building is a well-known landmark to the city’s ring road and now can be recognised by the glow of the reimagined beacon tower at one end at night.
The modern interventions have softened this large industrial building highlighting the romance in the existing architecture and celebrating the heritage. Playful yellow accents have been added through window frames, street entrances, and key internal elements. A three-storey extension houses offices and 39 residential units.
The central courtyard located 10 stories up is simple but creates a pleasant green space with trees and grass integrated linearly into the paving in an organic way that almost feels like nature starting to take hold.
The courtyard provides access to apartments with maisonettes above that are all dual aspect and energy efficient - the arrangement is neat. The maisonettes house private roof-top courtyards and photovoltaics and are heated with communal heat-pumps connected to dry coolers serving the office space, thus benefitting from waste heat.
The serrated terrace was defined by the 6 meter spacing of the columns below, the three new floors making best use of the existing structure. A 1.2 meter car parking space is required by federal law for residential development and therefore the car parking was key to redevelopment of the wider site.
Locating centrally in an existing structure was a low environmental impact approach, in embodied carbon terms, in land-use, and through supporting a modal shift by moving cars further away from homes.
The minimal fabric interventions open the floor plates up to the possibility of further future reinvention if modal shifts are borne out. The transformation feels dramatic, bold and highly successful.
Location: Eindhoven, Netherlands
Date of completion: 31/08/2022
Cost: Confidential
Gross internal area: 31000 m²
Additional Practice: V/Architecten
Contractor: Stam + de Koning
Structural Engineer: Tielemans Bouwconstructies
Services Consultant: LTC & C Installatiemanagement
Services Consultant: Visietech B.V.
Cost Consultant: DNC and IGG Bouweconomie
Project Management: Trudo Holding
