Centraal Beheer Office Building

Herman Hertzberger's 1972 structuralist office building — one of the landmarks of post-war Dutch architecture

The Centraal Beheer office complex, designed by Herman Hertzberger and completed in 1972, is one of the most influential post-war buildings in the Netherlands and a key work of Dutch Structuralism. It is built as a honeycomb of identical concrete-block work units arranged around small atria and pedestrian streets, with the intention of giving every employee a sense of ownership over their workspace.

It is not a museum and you cannot go in casually, but it is worth a fifteen-minute detour from the centre to look at the exterior — best from the south side, where the modular grid is most legible. Architecture students from all over Europe still make the pilgrimage.

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When the building opened in 1972 the staff were given an unusual degree of freedom to decorate their cubicles — hang lamps, bring plants, paint the walls — and a wave of photographs of the personalised interiors appeared in international architecture magazines. The building was held up as the answer to the alienation of the open-plan office. Centraal Beheer left in 2014 and the structure now houses other tenants, but several of the original work-island spaces survive.

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