The head office of VGZ is located in the new UNStudio station complex. While the client had originally written a competition for a building along the VGZ highway, the merger with other insurers, new image and real estate policy wanted to acquire a modern working style à la The New Way of Working. The company wanted to use the relocation to the new head office at the Arnhem station complex to introduce a new work style, which is time and place independent and which is based on the employee's freedom and personal responsibility1. The non-profit organization wanted to express 'innocence' in its housing and house style. "What did they mean by that? Do they see the office as a playground or are they looking for the dream of American pragmatism, with a traditional aesthetic and simple materials? Or do they want an office in which paradisiacal nature dominates? We have presented VGZ with the choices, but they could not choose.

That is why we decided not to make a design approach. By considering the company philosophy as the innocence of a child, an interior concept arose in which different types of incentives were released on the employees. The interior is not characterized by one rigid formal style, but by all sorts of atmospheres. Most importantly, the interior stimulates creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.

Working and communicating nowadays mainly takes place digitally. How can the physical working environment compete with that? With attractions! That is where creativity, thinking and cooperation are stimulated. In the VGZ office we created an attraction on every floor, such as the restaurant, the conference center, the work café, the basketball court and the pool table or the miniature golf course. In those places, the 'homo ludens' is incited to activity, encounter, relaxation or wonder. By placing prominent furniture on the attractions, these are striking places with their own identity and function. Above all, the attractions challenge the employees to different behavior and offer varied visual stimuli to the users. Nature is now reflected in the patterns on carpets and curtains and in the countless plants that have been placed in the open air shafts to the underlying parking garage.

We think it is important to get movement in an innovative office concept and make our interiors a choreography to tempt people to behave in a certain way. By organizing functions vertically, for example, you force people to meet each other. At VGZ a route has been created that runs around the huge air shafts and lift cores and leads through different places with all their own identity. The open, round staircase between the three floors, the only architectural intervention in the UN studio building, serves as a landmark.