Rabobank Westelijke Mijnstreek Advice Centre - lobby

This bank with many self-employed individuals and entrepreneurs as its clients had a couple of requests to be fulfilled by the architects: the design had to be inspiring, natural, accessible, inviting and most important of all- it didn't have to look like a bank. Since many of the bank's clients are self-employed, the owners wanted to make it possible for them to make use of the facilities to do their jobs if they felt inclined to do so, which meant public had to be included in the project's program, becoming its most relevant feature.

These working spaces are conceptually close to the way a public library operates, with a series of interconnected areas including individual work areas and group work areas and a public cafe for recreation purposes within work-hours. The project includes a series of floor-to-ceiling curtains which act as space separators in case one of the open areas needed to be turned into a more private one.