A steel facade with Granite® HDX for Post Zuid Municipal Service Station Apeldoorn

This building unites various municipal service installations of the Dutch town of Apeldoorn under one roof. With steel and glass as the main construction materials, the project's main focus is directed at efficiency, sustainability, and cooperation. Granite® HDX coated steel by ArcelorMittal was used for the steel cladding.

Detailed information

Post Zuid, with its distinguished shape and the slight cantilever of the upper two floors on both ends, now houses all the services that until recently were scattered all over the municipality. The project's main objectives were saving costs, increasing efficiency, and redeveloping an obsolete industrial area of the town in a sustainable way. 

Architectural challenge: creating a common space for municipal services

As of March 2013, Post Zuid is the new home of 40 municipal services, the fire brigade, the emergency medical services, the city's recycling centre, a bicycle pick-up centre, a lost and found office, and office space. Several workshops, conference rooms, and a cafeteria for common use promote a cooperative work environment. The new building offers a total of 12 000 m2 of usable space.

The design was jointly developed by COURAGE-MIES, a collaboration of Courage Architecten (Apeldoorn) and Mies Architectuur (Ede). Apart from the client's ambitious goals of sustainability and functionality, the tight schedule of the construction was a major challenge.

Designing a common building for so many services not only presented a difficult physical task, but it also meant bringing different working cultures together. In order to encourage social contact and collaboration among the staff of the different departments, various common spaces (e.g. workshops and cafeteria) were created.

The ground floor houses workshops and garages for the ambulance vehicles, fire engines, and the vehicles of the park maintenance department. The elongated volume of 160 m length placed on top of it contains offices and the cafeteria.

Steel structure and cladding

The building has a steel structure, and the facade consists mainly of steel and glass. The sandwich panels used for the metallic parts of the cladding are made of Granite® HDX precoated steel (S280GD+Z225) in jet black (colour denomination G9005). Instead of the coating's standard gloss of 30 GU, for this project a gloss of only 10 GU was requested.

ArcelorMittal FCE Benelux supplied the Granite® HDX coated steel used for the Post Zuid project via SDW Profiel B.V.

Recycling & sustainable features

For the location of Post Zuid, the municipality chose the site of an existing building, a former cold storage warehouse, in an obsolete industrial area. The aim was to erect the new building with as little material as possible maintaining as much of the existing steel structure as possible and integrating it into the new construction. Large portions of the demolition and construction waste were re-used for the new building or donated to charity organisations. The old roof panels, for instance, have been re-used in Ghana.

In order to ensure the ambitious sustainability requirements after construction as well, the new building is heated and cooled by heat and cold storage. A huge overhang made of steel structure on one side and an installation of a black steel curtain on the other side protects the upper two office floors from the sun where necessary. The main part of the upper volume is glazed to guarantee optimum natural light conditions. The rainwater is collected in ponds and used by the fire brigade.

Project information

  • Apeldoorn
  • Netherlands
  • Architect:
    Courage Architecten & Mies Architectuur
  • 2013
  • Client:
    Municipality Apeldoorn
  • Engineering firm:
    Nieman Raadgevende Ingenieurs
  • Contractor:
    Hegeman bv
  • Photographer:
    ©Lars Courage