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Contract - May 2009 - (Page 76)

material Photo by Joachim Baan Photography. outside the box Alrik Koudenberg and Joost van Bleiswijk make Nothing into something By AnnMarie Marano A cardboard office? To most, that would sound like a fireman’s nightmare. But not to designer Alrik Koudenberg, co-creator of a self-contained, modular cardboard office unit for Amsterdam-based Nothing, a five-month-old creative services company that goes above and beyond just advertising. “We’re so glad you’re not allowed to smoke indoors in Holland,” laughs Michael Jansen, a partner with Nothing. “We do commercial creativity,” he explains. “That’s a way of saying we do anything to help a brand further, whether that’s with a new product design, a new online platform, or it could be an interior or a service.” For its first headquarters, Jansen and partner Bas Korsten asked Koudenberg to make them “something special.” Koudenberg says, “These guys create big ideas out of nothing. So that was part of my thinking process. Creating something from nothing is creating something from a white piece of paper. We proposed that we make, literally, a paper world. It’s basically a big mock-up.” Korsten and Jansen also needed something that could be easily taken apart, as the company has only a two-year lease on its space. Individual parts can be replaced if damaged. Aside from a few mid-layers of MDF here and some tabletop varnishing there, the unit is 100 percent reinforced cardboard from the Tonelli Group, a company based in the Republic of San Marino. Using a technique coined by designer Joost van Bleiswijk—founder of the Joost Project in Eindhoven, The Netherlands—that doesn’t require any screws or glue, approximately 1,500, 15-mm.-thick cardboard pieces were CNC-cut and slid together into a honeycomb-type structure that doesn’t bend and adds unprecedented strength and support. Bleiswijk had great success with “no screw, no glue” with his stainless-steel products, but this was the first time he used the technique on cardboard. According to Dutch regulations, fireproofing wasn’t necessary, as the cardboard element is a self-contained unit, and the actual office shell is concrete, says Jansen. Lighting and electrical outlets run freely through the cardboard and are simply insulated and protected as they would be if housed in wood, plaster, or any other traditional building material. When all was done, Koudenberg and Bleiswijk created a coffee corner, boardroom, a brainstorming area with a meeting table and book cabinet, desks, an elevated workspace, and a storage room—all in a 100-sq.-m. office for a grand total of $25,000. “It has that monumental feel,” says Jansen. “We could have spent five times as much on this and gotten no attention. But we wanted to use the philosophy of our agency on ourselves.” Reader Service No. 203 Give us your feedback on this story at www.contractmagazine.com/contact. 76 contract may 2009 www.contractmagazine.com http://contractmag.hotims.com/r5/search.asp?action=search&return_by_category=y http://www.contractmagazine.com/contact http://www.contractmagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Contract - May 2009

Contract - May 2009
Contents
Editorial
Industry
Exhibition: Best of NeoCon® 2009
Keep It Simple, Sustainable
Generation NextGeneration Next
All Lit Up
Outside the Box
LEED v3: A Highly Evolved Solution
The Office Evolution
Brand New
Jump Start
Tailored Fit
The Energizer Effect
Diamond in the Rough
Chat Room
Designers Rate: Panel Fabrics
Ad Index
Perspectives

Contract - May 2009

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