Red Bull Amsterdam Unveils Its New Headquarters

25 July 2012,
A Sid lee Architecture Project.

Chosen over two other firms, Sid Lee Architecture and Sid Lee’s Amsterdam atelier were mandated to create the new Red Bull Amsterdam headquarters. The company agreed to settle in the North side of Amsterdam’s port area, in a site evocative of both an artistic street culture and the intensity of extreme sports. The project landed in an old heritage shipbuilding factory, facing a timeless crane and an old disused Russian submarine.

ARCHITECTURE TO SUIT A PHILOSOPHY
“To design the inner space, we aimed at retrieving Red Bull’s philosophy, dividing spaces according to their use and spirit, to suggest the idea of the two opposed and complementary hemispheres of the human mind, reason versus intuition, arts versus the industry, dark versus light, the rise of the angel versus the mention of the beast”, says Jean Pelland, lead design Architect and Senior Partner at Sid Lee Architecture.

Inside the shipbuilding factory, with its three adjacent bays, the architects focused on expressing the dichotomy of space, shifting from public spaces to private ones, from black to white and from white to black.

Acrhitectural Design: Sid Lee Architecture
Branding and graphic design: Sid Lee Amsterdam
Builders: Fiction Factory
Furniture: 2D&W
Local Architects (permits): Kamstra Architecten BNA
General Contractor: Jora Vision B.V.
Location: NDSM-Plein 26, Neveritaweg 34, 1033 WB Amsterdam
Type: Office
Total surface: 875 m2 (9 420 sq.ft.)
Construction budget: $ 1,5 M
Completed: April 2011

Materials used are highly innovative in terms of technology, eco-sustainability and energy saving, as well as constantly reusable. The flush grills below the glazing aid circulation that prevents condensation in winter while the floor area is made from special planks of reconstituted wood with under-floor heating incorporated below.

Designed to be assembled and disassembled relatively easily, the pavilion has an overall weight of roughly thirty tonnes. As each location has different weather as well as architectural conditions, a preliminary survey of the site is necessary to prepare special foundations to transmit the loads according to the specific site conditions each time it is installed.