Mediavaert: a cutting-edge media hub in Europe’s largest timber-hybrid office complex

Sustainable building services 

Acting as a contemporary centre for journalism, the media hub houses prominent Dutch newspapers and magazines, and includes test labs, radio studios, meeting rooms, and an event location. 

Driven by the fast-paced newsroom agenda, the design brief for the new headquarters was to encourage creativity and collaboration, maximise flexibility and optimise wellbeing. 

Arup’s engineers designed a hybrid-timber structure that blends seamlessly with the architecture, alongside a flexible building services concept that enhances staff wellbeing and sets a new standard for sustainable, future-proof office design. Our approach translated into large scale ground source heating and cooling, large PV arrays, LED lighting and an easily adjustable floor-based displacement ventilation climate concept. This is complemented by a smart building control system tailored to DPG Media’s ever-changing operations. 

Flexible use and necessary changes to the building are easily made by moving ventilation grilles in the raised floor, or by (un)plugging data or power cables from the sockets beneath the floor and reprogramming the building controls to reflect new room layouts for individual controls like climate ceiling islands or lighting. This concept eliminates the need for physical alterations to building services when changes are required. 

The building was awarded BREEAM Excellent in September 2023.  

Designing a timber building structure 

Arup and our partners focused on contributing to a healthy and inspiring working environment with a total architecture design concept where architecture, structural engineering, building services, building physics and landscaping come together into one design.

With a total gross floor area of 46,000 m2, Mediavaert is one of the largest timber-hybrid office buildings in the world. Arup’s structural engineers developed a timber hybrid system using timber hybrid slabs and columns all within a limited floor to floor heigh, to enhance staff comfort and set a new standard for modern sustainable office design.  

The 7,000 m3 of timber used in the building has stored 7,642,000 kg of CO2, the equivalent of about 37 million km driven by a middle-class car. 

Arup’s integrated design approach and the collaboration with the architect and building physics consultant has resulted in an almost completely demountable and therefore highly circular building, ready for the future.