This place in Amsterdam has yet to be made. Unlike in the city centre, where you must fit in carefully, there is an opportunity here to shape the place. At this intersection of different worlds and different scales, between residential area, highway and fairground, there is only one possibility: 'you have to find your own fit'. This is where fashion brand Suitsupply plans to have its head office.

Amidst the different transport flows and the confusion about what is front and what is back, we designed a staying place that absorbs and challenges the diversity of the environment. The plinth of the building is a place with a public and diverse character, the place where Suitsupply touches the city, but also makes it, and thus raises it to another level.

As a vertically integrated company, Suitsupply is a world on its own. The company has many faces and is a crossroads of many kinds of knowledge and people. The head office has to be a place that stimulates that diversity – a place where the different parts have their own position, but can also influence and strengthen each other.

We believe that a building can contribute to this. In this case, not one building, but three allow for diverse uses and encounters. Each of the three buildings has its own character and logic, and together they make one place. In that interplay, the three buildings become more than the sum of their parts: they form a complex with many atmospheres, qualities, vistas and surprises.

• Location

  Amsterdam, The Netherlands

• Client

  Suitsupply

• Project

  Competition

• In collaboration with

  Bollinger Grohmann

• 51N4E team

  Freek Persyn, Dieter Leyssen, Paul Steinbrück, Francesca Lantieri, Yann Gueguen

• Consultants

  Bollinger + Grohmann, ARUP, Remco Brugginck

• Visualisations

  MakeMe

• Movie editing

  Het Peleton

• Programme

  Mixed use headquarters

• Image credits

  51N4E