A solid closed wall made up of 80 wooden columns is your first impression of PlantijnCasparie printing shop when approaching via the Merwede Canal. The wall gradually opens up as you pass the building. Behind the rigid row of six metre high columns, a surprising and spatial interior unfolds. Double height areas are alternated with perspectives and closed volumes.
PlantijnCasparie has a ‘flat’ organisational structure where the employees cherish great love for graphical work. The building comprises three straight boxes, efficient and effective, varying in size, up against each other but not linked. Forced by the situation, the boxes become more narrow and deeper from the front backwards. One wide box on the canal, with studios and offices, followed by the printing shop and at the rear, a box with the binders, storage and forwarding warehouse. Three straight boxes, efficient and effective, varying in size, up against each other but not linked. Forced by the situation, the boxes become more narrow and deeper from the front backwards.
The representative part, a transparent box containing the offices and studios, lies like a sound barrier between the printing shop and the houses on the other side of the canal. This part of the building too is a simple and efficient stacking and switching of programme. The offices, conference rooms, archives and studios are stacked against the wall of the printing hall. The counter-jog of these areas is a double height space which borders on the front facade and is the meeting space of the company, there is a canteen on the left and an office on the right hand side, where the printing work is coordinated and prepared.
Where possible, the offices and printing shop are separated by means of floor to ceiling glass walls, giving optimum contact between the printing preparation work, account management and actual printing work. The management offices and offices of the head of the printing shop are central on the ground floor. The programme upstairs, including administration, management and conference rooms is not directly involved in the production process, however the 2.40 metre wide windows which separate the working areas from the double height space do offer views of the workstations and the canteen on the ground floor. Two open staircases in the account management area make the physical connection between the two floors obvious. The walls of the double height space are clad with green concrete plywood. The traffic area adjacent to the printing shop has three windows with views of the printing presses, the actual heart of the company.
The front facade on the eastern side of the building comprises a series of 10 cm wide and 30 cm deep wooden columns with a centre to centre dimension of 70 cm. The columns have triplicate functions, as the roof bearing construction, as frames and as screening lamellae to keep out the sun, which turns to the south quite early in the morning. The boardroom and printing preparation department is the programme which is emphatically present in the front facade. These are the only details in the rigid facade, together with the entrance, which is a steel carousel door.
