Home > Magazine > Issues > #44 Mar/Apr 2012 > Municipal office, Oostkamp

Municipal office, Oostkamp

In the clouds

OOSTKAMP (BE) - Oostkamp wanted a new building for its municipal services, so in 2008 it approached the Flemish Government Architect who organizes Open Tenders for such public commissions, which are creative interpretations of European tendering. The Open Tender ensures that it is not only big firms that get a chance to compete for commissions, but young talent as well. That's one side of the story; the other is that via the Open Tenders public clients come into contact with architectural ideas they probably didn't even know existed.

In Oostkamp, the Spanish architect Carlos Arroyo secured the commission to convert a former Coca-Cola distribution centre into local government offices. The existing distribution hall, which was retained, is rather capacious for its new function. So in the large spaces smaller sections have been divided off in a landscape of climatized clouds of glass fibre-reinforced gypsum. The idea of a cycle path running straight through the hall didn't make it, but otherwise the finished building reveals the full radicalness of Arroyo's original concept.