Using The Edge

The brain behind the world’s smartest office building, The Edge in Amsterdam, Ron Bakker aims to promote communication and creative thought through smarter, more sustainable architecture.

- Rosalind Gibb

On arrival at the office a phone app locates an available parking space. A room with a sky view has been booked for a client meeting and the coffee machine automatically knows your order.

As workers proceed through the day unencumbered by once-familiar hassles such as paper jams and broken equipment, their electric cars are being charged in the garage for free.

It may sound like a utopian fantasy, but for the 2,000 plus employees at The Edge office building in Amsterdam, this stressfree, uber-efficient working environment is just a part of daily life.

The gleaming glass structure, with its multi-storey, north-facing glass atrium and Internet of Things [IoT] system, is the brainchild of Ron Bakker and his architecture firm, PLP.

Cutting-edge design features and gadgets have been integrated into the 40,000 square metres of floor space, from safe plastic for cable insulations that is non-toxic in the event of fire, to a robot that cruises around the building at night as a security guard.

The solar panels create more electricity than the building uses. And with a BREEAM rating (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) of 98.36 percent, it is widely considered the greenest – not to mention the smartest – office building in the world.

The Edge opened back in 2014, but its ground-breaking design remains cutting edge. So much so that Bakker still regularly travels the world giving talks about his flagship creation.

“It is still gaining interest, I think because it was a bit of a pilot project in many ways in terms of the technology used,” says Bakker.

“One real innovation at The Edge is the app that users of the building have on their smart phone, which makes a direct link between them and the object of the building. So we also have inanimate objects talking to each other; the Internet of Things.”