A steel framework covered in white mesh offers shading and privacy to the street frontage of this workplace building in Deinze, Belgium by CAAN Architects .
The headquarters for steel fabrication firm Lootens Line is positioned by a canal on the outskirts of the city, and was made to accommodate offices, meeting rooms and a showroom.
The new structure adjoins present warehouses that CAAN Architects renovated and extended to property the client’s own manufacturing machinery.
A small office in between the warehouses and a street that runs alongside the canal had been both removed to make way for the new building, which extends the roofline of the existing construction in the direction of the street and is fronted by the mesh screen.
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“The 3-storey office creating is integrated in the volumetry of the present warehouse and is finished with new white isolated front panels,” mentioned the architects in a statement.
The screen rises to the roofline of the office block at a single finish and the reception region at the other, helping to control levels of privacy and direct sunlight inside the building.
“This rhombic-shaped carbon grill gives an additional texture to the volume but is mostly utilized to give the office an optimum sun shading,” the architects added.
The mesh also varieties a boundary fence along the edge of the site, which drops down 1 metre from the road to the floor level of the existing buildings. An entrance from the street prospects to a reception and stairs that descend to the workshops.
Tall narrow windows dealing with the street and three small patios enclosed in glass allow natural light to reach this decrease-ground floor. Trees planted in the patios task over the structure’s roof height and can be witnessed from the street.
The lower-ground floor extends along the full length of the web site, offering area for meeting rooms, a showroom and auditorium, and the company’s archive and storage area.
A gap in between the workshops and the new building enables daylight to reach the offices via glazed north-dealing with surfaces, with elevated glass-walled walkways connecting an workplace and lunch room at both end of the website with the workshops.
The street-dealing with walls of the workshops and the new building are completed in a rough white render and punctuated by an irregular pattern of square windows.
“These square windows have a lot of functions,” said the architects. “They supply the warehouse and the workplace with sunlight, they give a fantastic view over the canal, they make positive there is a correlation amongst the offices and the workplace and there is also a filtered visibility amongst the public road and the complete company.”
The roof of the reduce-ground floor is covered with plants, and is ignored by the offices and a roof terrace on prime of the lunch space. A separate roof terrace subsequent to the manager’s workplace at the other finish of the developing seems onto the canal and is similarly concealed behind the mesh surface.
Photography is by Thomas De Bruyne.
Project credits:
Architects: Koen Heijse, Roel Cocquyt
Collaborator: Christophe Gardin
Engineering: Coene Consulting
Ground floor prepare 
1st floor prepare 
Second floor plan Dezeen
