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THE NETHERLANDS

2002

THE HAGUE

COMMERCIAL

AND RESIDENTIAL 
DEVELOPMENT

 

This building has been baptized the Grand Embrace. It is the 'gateway' to The Hague, a flowery welcome to symbolize the warm hospitality of the city toward its guests and citizens by presenting visitors and city residents a green building with its arm open wide to receive them all; it gives back to the community, in the form of horizontal and vertical gardens, all the ground that the building covers. It gives back to the city the ground it covers in the form of a green podium to create a pleasant space with a very good integration between public and speculative functions.

The vertical gardens show to the city and investors their sensibili ty for a better quality of life and for the environment. The building is divided into three separate, but integrated program areas. 
Below ground there is 10,000 sq.mt. of parking for office and residential tenants.

A podium of two floors offers 7,500 sq.mt. of retail space. This area is covered by an outdoor garden or hottus conc1usus. Rising from the garden is a 27 -story office and residential tower. It is shaped like a bridge spanning over the hoitus conc1usus and not to block views from the neighbouring Stitchage Building. 
The main of the Commercial Center is effectively an enlargement of the station public spaces. The entrances to the Commercial Center are set at the corners of the rectangle. Inside the spaces are made more agreeable from the presence of a big green island with a small lake, lit by a glass atrium. The hortus conc1usus is a roof garden over the commercial spaces. It makes a connection toward the Railway Station through the Stitchage Building. Here, more commercial space may be reached that are placed at the base of the Grand Embrace tower. Tenants such as restaurants, bars and gymnasiums would benefit from the ability to expand their uses onto the garden. 
The 27 -story tower is comprised of private residences and commercial offices.

The residences are reached from the street level as well as from the parking floors below ground. The offices are reached from the parking floors as well as from the Commercial Center and the hortus concusus. 
The Grand Embrace building is wrapped in a layer of terraces placed at each floor level and protected by glass. The offices and residences benefit greatly from these protected gardens, which provide tenants beautiful places to enjoy the scenery while at the same time offing a building with a green skin: a vertical garden monumental in scale to be seen from afar. The winter gardens in from of each unit greatly reduce the building's heat gains in the summer and helps to keep it warmer in the winter by forestalling heat losses. The Stitchage Building is also adapted to support a similar green facade to offer these tenants the same benefits and to block outside noises. 

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