Kantoorgebouw Inagro

The office building that ONO architectuur designed for Inagro fits into a recent master plan that was intended among other things to bring together the crop-based research activities that are scattered across the site so as to enable more exchange between the sections. The new office building with its own reception, landscape offices, individual workplaces, event hall and meeting rooms brings researchers together in one place. The office building was located immediately behind the main 1950s building, but the composition of its volume and its light-grey external cladding mean it relates more to the surrounding rectangular patchwork of sheds and test infrastructure. Yet there is no mimicry at play. After all, by means of this project, ONO also injected the site with a great many references to the Swiss architecture of the ‘new objectivity’ or rationalism, using colour and plenty of aesthetic refinement. In this way, the building also has an appeal that is separate from its logistical surroundings.

This text is based on the essay of Maarten Liefooghe, which has been published in the Flanders Architectural Review N°14. When Attitudes Take Form