booking.com

New Booking.com headquarters unique in every way

With 65,000 m2, the Booking.com campus is the largest inner-city European office new construction in recent years. The complex on Amsterdam’s Oosterdokseiland is also our largest project in Van den Pol history. Location, contract, building, installation package, interior design; all aspects are unique and complex. The end result makes jaws drop.

Van den Pol and Klimaatservice together form an installation combination

Booking.com was located at various locations in Amsterdam and the need for a joint headquarters arose. The choice fell on the last plot of Oosterdokseiland. UN Studio was selected for the design of the building. The first pile was driven into the ground in 2017. Van den Pol and Klimaatservice Holland together formed the installation combination. As construction progressed, Booking became increasingly involved in the project. Bas Willems, project manager on behalf of CBRE, was called in to integrate their design ideas into the building. “There were of course agreements about the installation package, where the installers assumed many repetitive elements. Then ten different interior architects joined the meeting. That was a bit of a shock. Not everything is the same in the building. They couldn’t go on autopilot anywhere. But the switch quickly turned and the installers’ focus was on translating the design into practice.

“We have focused on flexibility from the start”

A lot happened during the construction period of the campus. For example, Covid led to a different view of office use. “Yet the original design still works wonderfully,” notes Bob Elshof, responsible for Global Real Estate at Booking.com. “From the very beginning, we have focused on flexibility, both spatially, functionally and technically.

With a long, extensive and complex project, tensions and setbacks are inevitable. “Everyone handled this well,” says Willems, “there was always respect for each other’s position and focus on the common goal.” Elshof shares that observation. “That leads to an end result of which everyone involved is rightly proud.”

Booking.com’s headquarters is full of smart sensors. This controls lighting and temperature. Individual employees’ preferences are set automatically, regardless of where they are. “The building generates an enormous amount of data,” says Willems. “These are analyzed by Booking.com and used to implement targeted optimization. This means that the campus is increasingly adapting to the users.”

For us, the campus is the largest project in history. More than 750 kilometers of cable were used in the complex. More than 9,000 lighting fixtures have been installed and there are 1,065 PV panels on the roof.