A look inside the Municipality of Leeuwarden

1993 is the year in which Leeuwarden’s Town Hall was built, right at the foot of the Oldehove. A large renovation project resulted in a more sustainable building. The interior was not forgotten: office cubicles made way for an open work environment with plenty of room for teamwork and meetings. The Work Café, which has its own coffee bar, invites visitors and suppliers to pull up a chair. Gispen provided the Town Hall of Leeuwarden with both new and refurbished furniture.

New products, custom solutions and clever reuse

All the supporting services of the Municipality of Leeuwarden are housed in the Town Hall. In order to accommodate the growing organisation within the existing building, there was need for a more efficient layout. In addition, the municipality was looking for a more open and flexible work environment, making collaboration and consultation even easier. OTH Architects created the designs for both the renovation and the new interior. Gispen, who has been the main supplier of the Municipality of Leeuwarden since 2012, provided a full furnishing service. Account manager Karin Werges: 'In addition to new products and many custom solutions, we cleverly reused existing furniture.'

Refurbished desks

The TM dual workstations that were still in good condition were given new tops with a contemporary look. We also upholstered the steel dividing screens, and added cubbies to all the tabletops: power sockets directly incorporated into the workstations for easy charging of mobile devices. Gispen supplied 240 Turn conference chairs. The hybrid motion technology of this chair automatically adjusts to the weight of the user and offers comfort and freedom of movement. Gispen IC agile workstations are found in the open work environment. The conference tables were made to measure with incorporated power supplies, per request.

Eyecatcher

At the Work Café, there are many Vitra chairs with wooden frames as well as Norman Copenhagen rocking chairs. These are accompanied by tailormade Brink and Campman rugs, for a homely atmosphere and acoustic comfort. Each department within the open work environment has its own 'living room cabinet' in a striking blue or yellow colour by Moooi: Paper Cabinet, an eye-catcher made of a very lightweight material.

Photograpy by Chris van Koeverden

We have refurbished and refreshed the Gispen TM desks that we supplied years ago, making them last for many more years and matching them with the new interior.

Karin Werges-Schuster Account manager at Gispen