Using The Edge

The brain behind the world’s smartest office building, The Edge in Amsterdam, Ron Bakker aims to promote communication and creative thought through smarter, more sustainable architecture.

- Rosalind Gibb

On arrival at the office a phone app locates an available parking space. A room with a sky view has been booked for a client meeting and the coffee machine automatically knows your order.

As workers proceed through the day unencumbered by once-familiar hassles such as paper jams and broken equipment, their electric cars are being charged in the garage for free.

It may sound like a utopian fantasy, but for the 2,000 plus employees at The Edge office building in Amsterdam, this stressfree, uber-efficient working environment is just a part of daily life.

The gleaming glass structure, with its multi-storey, north-facing glass atrium and Internet of Things [IoT] system, is the brainchild of Ron Bakker and his architecture firm, PLP.

Cutting-edge design features and gadgets have been integrated into the 40,000 square metres of floor space, from safe plastic for cable insulations that is non-toxic in the event of fire, to a robot that cruises around the building at night as a security guard.

The solar panels create more electricity than the building uses. And with a BREEAM rating (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) of 98.36 percent, it is widely considered the greenest – not to mention the smartest – office building in the world.

The Edge opened back in 2014, but its ground-breaking design remains cutting edge. So much so that Bakker still regularly travels the world giving talks about his flagship creation.

“It is still gaining interest, I think because it was a bit of a pilot project in many ways in terms of the technology used,” says Bakker.