The small nation of The Netherlands has taken on an outsize role in international affairs, as a founding member of the European Union and as headquarters of the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague, also the seat of Dutch government. But this growth in bureaucracy could not be accommodated in the medieval structures that housed the small Dutch executive and legislative branches, and a new administration hub grew near the city’s central railway station. OMA—which is known for its international work but is based in nearby Rotterdam—has converted a building, completed only in 1992, which was a keystone for this development, paring back a brilliantly conceived but cluttered structure and creating a platform for a more flexible bureaucracy.
Originally home to the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM), the building was a 1 million-squarefoot hulking affirmation of the expansive ambitions of the new Netherlands. Designed by the Dutch architect Jan Hoogstad, the VROM was built around five monumental prefabricated concrete cores, each 16 stories and 194 feet high—taking cues from the only other nearby building, Herman Hertzberger’s Ministry of Social Welfare and Employment (1990), a complex divided into separate cruciform buildings to match the more diminutive urban scale of the historic city. (Tellingly, Hertzberger himself is currently converting that out-of-date complex into housing.)
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