Heart of the Hague - design of the The Hague's city hall and library

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 1996 by Ivor Richards

A grand civic gesture and an elegant mega-structure in one project, this combination of city hall and library is a harmony of systems/masterfully integrated into the city fabric, urban space and natural patterns of movement.

Richard Meier summarised his largest project to date by saying: 'I look forward to the atrium functioning as the heart of the city.'(1)

As the culmination of a series of recent urban buildings in northern Europe (AR December 1994 pp58-62; AR June 1995 pp38-46; April 1995 pp22-37), this project is again founded within the site plan - an analysis of the existing city fabric, its geometry and pathways.(2) But in this case a vast 12-storey mega-structure of City Hall offices has been made the subject of a tapering perimeter plan that occupies an entire urban city-block, creating a voided centre - the citizens' hall or atrium. This overall form is terminated at its main south-western interface with the Spui in a rotating mass that contains the city library, forming the main entrance plaza to the City Hall. This is in response both to the Nieuwe Kerk and the Spuiplein - the 'culture square' precinct of the Hague that includes the Koolhaas Netherlands Dance Theatre (AR September 1988 pp32-40). At the opposite north-eastern end of the site, a further secondary entrance plaza is captured in the terminal arm of commercial office space. The two entry plazas thus recognise both the historic core in the south-west and the city centre in the north-east, while the wedge-shaped perimeter wrap of offices unites the 10-degree shift in the city grids that are resolved for the first time at this point within Meier's site plan. Movement as an organising device is central to the project - the City Hall is now an integral part of moving through the city itself, with its plazas and the atrium.

As with Meier's Stadthaus in Ulm (opened in 1993, AR April 1993 pp22-25) The Hague complex represents the resolution of an extended history of both unrealised projects and subsequent urban decay.(3) The seventeenth-century port and trading district lost its economic significance with the removal of maritime business to Laakhavens at the turn of this century, leaving in its wake an impoverished urban condition, while the city itself also lacked a visible centre, despite notable places such as the Groenmarkt or the Voorhout within its existing fabric.

In the 1980s the establishment on the Spui of the Netherlands Dance Theatre and the adjacent Hotel Mercure signalled a point of change. But it was the brilliant initiative of Alderman Adri Duivesteijn in 1986 that combined the previously separate functions of both City Hall and Library on to the single site, resulting in the subsequent architectural competition won by Richard Meier and taken forward in 1987.

Meier accepted the need for dialogue and revision, and the library has undergone change in its emphasis and form, but the principal characteristics of the project have been remarkably durable. The finished building, opened in September 1995 by Queen Beatrix, is not only the largest, but in the light of the astringent budget, the most refined achievement within Meier's programme of public buildings to date.

The Hague project is a grand civic gesture and an elegant mega-structure in one project containing a public space of spectacular scale. It also establishes Richard Meier as a civic architect of international stature, capable of delivering a new form of urban order - a creator of the public realm. This creation is essentially very direct and simple, related not just to the city but to the climate - the visible city centre is the people's atrium, a sheltered celebration of democracy, space and light.

The great public space of the Hague Atrium clearly has European precedents, for instance in the Milan Galleria or in the scale of the piazza San Marco in Venice, to which it approximates. Meier has also cited his own local parallels: 'the Berlage Beurs building in Amsterdam, with its wonderful toplit space, shows that for the Dutch it is a familiar way of making an interior space for the public, flanked by offices around. What makes the city hall atrium unique is its scale.'(4)

The Hague Atrium is surrounded at ground level, both on the facades of the Kalvermarkt and the Turfmarkt, by lettable spaces for shops, boutiques and cafes. The whole form is lifted on pilotis that establish a grand two-storey order at ground level. This is repeated again at roof level in the form of a colonnaded loft. The atrium volume is crossed by two tiers of aerial bridges - one long and narrow, the other wider and short, resulting from the extended wedge form plan. These bridges also locate the interior elevators and form busy nodes within the granite paved space. The bridges are a set-piece example of the great care that has been lavished on the refinement of form, structure and detail. The continuity of the atrium space is enriched by these interventions, whose finesse can almost go unnoticed in this vast architectural ensemble. The same quality of refinement applies to other elements such as window mullions, panel joints, handrails and especially to staircases. Throughout, on a low budget, Meier has lifted the standard details of an office building to a higher level: 'an architecturally splendid Meier could be built for the same price per square metre as any anonymous office monster somewhere on the edge of the city.'(5)