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Eckhart Blog

Eiffel is a services company that specializes in solutions in the fields of Finance, Legal and Processes. Eiffel was started in 1992 and is named after the French engineer Gustave Eiffel, working form the metaphore of creating elegant, ingenious and solid structures.

Eiffel, interieurarchitectuur, interieurontwerp, interior design, het nieuwe werken, design, ontwerp

Entrance zone with reception desk, coffee bar and original section of the Eiffeltower

At the end of 2008. Eiffel was busy preparing its new office location. It was situated in an existing 80's office building at the moment and had just started with the construction of its new headquarters. For this building, Eiffel asked Eckhart to work on the concept and design of the interior, based on the unique Eiffel DNA. A new way of working was developed for the company, based on the concept of realizing an inviting and welcoming "heart" for its customers and employees.

Eiffel, interieurarchitectuur, interieurontwerp, interior design, het nieuwe werken, design, ontwerp

Central themes:

- realizing a new "heart" for the company

- open organisation

- sustainable interior (for both products and processes)

A unique aspect of this project was the level of driving force that the concept was able to keep during every phase. With many projects, a concept is watered down during realization due to practical and economical aspects, but this never occured at Eiffel.

The Eiffel Heart

The Eiffel organisation consists of a relatively small core team of people (about 100) that use the building as their home base. Due to Eiffel's work on temporary and interim basis, most of their other 500 employees only spend a part of their time in their home location. To accomodate this, most of the workstations are equipped as hot-desks for use as required.

Eiffel, interieurarchitectuur, interieurontwerp, interior design, het nieuwe werken, design, ontwerp

Hot-desking near the library in the entrance zone

Eiffel, interieurarchitectuur, interieurontwerp, interior design, het nieuwe werken, design, ontwerp

Hot-desking for project- and thematically structured work

Depending on the type of work, a variety of workstations have been realized. These range from foral to informal and from closed off to fully open. The building also includes a wide range of different meeting-, brainstorm- and training rooms, as well as a spacious auditorium.

Eiffel, interieurarchitectuur, interieurontwerp, interior design, het nieuwe werken, design, ontwerp

Meeting rooms

Brainstorm space near workstations

Open meeting room

Auditorium at the entrance zone for lectures and conferences

Meeting room for active meetings

Skybox with large conference table and lounge for informal discussions

To accomodate for informal meetings and exchanges, each floor was equipped with generous lounge- and meeting places to facilitate communication and exchange of ideas and knowledge.

Eiffel, interieurarchitectuur, interieurontwerp, interior design, het nieuwe werken, design, ontwerp

Coffee bar and hot-desks in the entrance zone

Time-out structure as an informal meeting space

Company bar/restaurant

Open organisation

The organisation of the building was kept as open as possible, with a minimum of walls that are transparant where possible. This includes the executive offices which are placed, at the express desire of the client, in the middle of the office floor without seperations. The old building was fairly solid and closed, with mostly cellular offices. The new building radically breaks with this and is dedicated to a new approach for both working and internal communication.

Eiffel, interieurarchitectuur, interieurontwerp, interior design, het nieuwe werken, design, ontwerp

Open office space with workstations, lounge seats and flexible acoustic partitions

Executive office with open connection to the office floor

A sustainable interior

Sustainability was presented as a design team by Eiffel without formulating any concrete goals or ambitions. Eckhart has used its bespoke sustainability framework for interior design, which was developed in close cooperation with international engineering firm Arup, to assess and guide the approach for this project. This framework was used to decide on both current and future themes to consider and steps to take, based on the current best practice and ambitions at Eiffel.

Eiffel, interior design, interieurontwerp, het nieuwe werken, duurzaamheid

Various workstations dedicated to hot-desking

The most important theme was the optimalisation of the number of workstations. Eiffel is an organisation with about 500 FTE's, combined with a usage percentage of around 40%. To optimally accomodate this, the total number of formal workstations in the building is just under 200. Through the diversity in other locations for working and meeting rooms, this can be easily expanded to meet peak demand.

Eiffel, interior design, interieurontwerp, het nieuwe werken, duurzaamheid

Other aspects that were considered and developed are in intelligent lighting system, smart routing within the building and an assessment of the material properties and use life for the various products that were used in the interior.