© Lucas van der Wee | cepezed
PROJECT DETAILS:
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Building D(emountable) is a modern, sustainable and fully demountable structure on the site of a historic, monumental building complex in the center of Dutch city Delft. This site is owned by cepezed, an agency with expertise in the development, the design and the realization of buildings.
CREATIVE CLUSTER
cepezed acquired the complex with former laboratories from Delft University of Technology in 2012. It transformed the monumental buildings into a creative cluster with housing for various companies in the creative sector, including the office itself. However, the only non-monumental building on site was in poor condition. It has now made way for the new construction of Building D(emountable). Again, this is a full-blown own development of cepezed and it is intended for companies in the knowledge-intensive creative industry. It houses the app and website developer, 9to5 software and a game developer Triumph Studios.
CIRCULAR PROTOTYPE
The Netherlands has set itself the goal of rendering all construction activities fully circular by 2050, while cepezed has a long reputation for modular and demountable design and construction. Moreover, director Menno Rubbens of developer cepezed projects is part of the national program committee to achieve the national circularity goals. Partly for those reasons, Building D(emountable) also had to become an example project on cepezed’s own grounds. The way in which the office approaches circular construction and the way in which one can make buildings that can later donate to other projects or even be reused elsewhere in their entirety.
LIGHTWEIGHT, FLEXIBLE AND GAS-FREE
Building D(emountable) has exactly the same footprint as the existing building that was no longer good and was demolished. It measures 11 by 21.5 meters and has four floors of about 200 square meters of lettable floor area each. In addition to being demountable and remountable, the structure is also super lightweight: the use of materials is kept to an absolute minimum. The building is also completely flexible in its arrangement, has no gas connection and is equipped with heat recovery. The ground floor is made of poured concrete, but otherwise, all building components are modular and dry mounted. Supreme simplicity has been an important principle in the design.
