Snake charmer: a management school installed in an anonymous office building expresses a new spirit of exuberance.

The lchthus Business Centre is one of the special departments of the lchthus Hogeschool in Rotterdam, preparing its students for the tough competitive world of commerce.

The Centre's new offices and classrooms, designed by 24H-architecture, have been inserted into the third floor of an existing office block on the Zalmhaven (salmon wharf) in the city's old docklands.

Roughly H-shaped in plan, the host building had a fairly intractable interior mapped out by grid-lines, serried ranks of structural columns, and numerous service cores, and was vertically restricted by low ceiling heights. It plainly needed softening and animating, and this the architects have done by devising organic forms which divide classrooms from offices and public space and using colour and the techniques of the electronic age, such as digital imaging, to enliven the resulting spaces. Otherwise, the shell has been left more or less intact. Ceilings, simply painted, carry exposed services and the floor has been covered with polished mo. Because the building is dwarfed by its neighbours, windows have been screened with sheer fabric through which can be seen shadows of the surrounding city.

Four clusters of classrooms are concentrated in roughly one half of the plan, each cluster being contained by a curving wall, like a ribbon, and identified by a different colour. All the walls (made of gypsum board) are covered with digitally merged images and incorporate fluorescent tubes covered with satinized perspex. Emitting luminance, the structures seem to float through the open spaces. The colours of classroom interiors echo those of their wrapping but are softer.

Separating public space from offices is a strange body that turns out to contain meeting rooms on either side of an undulating arched passage. This surreal skeletal structure is made of plywood ribs covered with beech strips and tapers into a tail that supports curving glass panels around the offices. On the public side, it forms a shapely bench.

24H's furniture, in the form of puzzleSIT, is a source of childlike amusement. Designed specially for this office, it is composed of six brightly-coloured seats shaped like pieces of a three-dimensional puzzle that fit together to make a 6m long sculptural sofa. Two people can sit -- one upright, one reclining -- on each piece. Since designing puzzleSIT, the architects have met with such enthusiasm that they have put it into production with the Belgian manufacturer, Drisag.

Architect

24H-architecture

Project architects

Maartje Lammers, Boris Zeisser

Collaborators

Jeroen ter Haar, Severine Kas, Sabrina Kers, Gerben Vos, Heleen Bothof

Photographs

Christian Richters