Municipality of Venlo, Netherlands
Building Connection with Their Citizens
The Challenge
The goal of the new City Hall of Venlo was to facilitate authentic conversations. To achieve this, employees were directly empowered to have flexibility to choose how to best increase contact and collaboration with citizens and partners alike, as well as with each other.
The Bricks
While the municipal government wanted to reduce their overall physical footprint, they aimed to apply those cost savings into significantly improving the quality of their facilities and their staff.
The Bytes
They also wanted to embrace more digital technology so provide more customer-friendly services.
The Behaviour
The City of Venlo expressed the desire to breakdown the departmental silos and present as a more attractive employer.
The Results
Veldhoen + Company guided the local government of Venlo to envision and build a new work environment based on Cradle-to-Cradle design principles, as well as reimagine the way people work and interact in the building with the same underlying principles in mind.
The success of the building, built by Kraaijvanger Architects, thus does not only depend on the spectacular physical environment that was built, but relies heavily on the ways in which the employees, citizens and partners use all the facilities in the new building and the cultural elements that underpin their connections. They were able to reduce the total office footprint by 6,000 sqm while maintaining very high employee satisfaction.
When anyone joins the Municipality of Venlo, they are trained in ABW - allowing Venlo to developed from a traditional local government to an architectural and cultural landmark innovating in citizen care and services.
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