Insurance company Centraal Beheer’s office building in Apeldoorn, that dates back to 1972, is the pinnacle of the impressive career of the by now 90-year-old architect Herman Hertzberger.

 

However what will remain of Hertzberger’s social, humanist ideals now plans have been laid to repurpose his masterpiece (as habitation)?

Herman Hertzberger’s work is structuralist, a movement that rejected the cold, above-human scale of contemporary architecture during thew 1960s and 1970s. perhaps the best example of office architecture tailored to humans and their interactions as a guiding principle is Hertzberger’s design for the offices of Centraal Beheer [insurance company] from 1972, with its open structure of workspaces and open plan offices.

Lecture after the screening:

What climate did we have? On the realities of design in the 1960s and 1970s in Europe

by Dorota Jędruch