Facade insulation increases comfort and appearance

Transformation from work to residential function

Anyone driving past the former office on Prins Bernhardlaan in Voorburg sees a modern building with striking white stripes on the facade. What is not immediately visible is the transformation of the office building itself. In addition to a commercial first floor, the building now has two floors with a total of 56 apartments.  

The white strips on the facade are the visible side of the facade insulation installed by IJsselmonde exterior facade insulation. "The shape of the building is nice, but the appearance was quite dated," said Jacco Oostenbrug, commercial director of IJsselmonde exterior facade insulation. The office building dates from the late 1980s and belongs to a complex that includes a residential tower and an apartment building. Only the office building has been remodeled. The first floor still consists of stores and commercial spaces, such as a nursery, a web store and a dentist. The commercial spaces on the first and second floors have been transformed to residential use.

Insulation with stucco

Insulating the facades is often commissioned by a construction contractor, in this case Giesbers of Rotterdam. Oostenbrug: "Facade insulation is so specialized, it is always outsourced. And then we are one of the players." IJsselmonde works exclusively with the facade insulation systems of Sto Isoned BV. Oostenbrug: "Sto is a world player and a very important party in the Netherlands. With Sto, we are not necessarily choosing the biggest party, but quality. In addition, we find it important that we can work well with Sto and that the advisors think along flexibly in solutions." In this project, standard insulation boards were chosen that were applied to the existing substrate. Over this is a reinforcement layer finished with a decorative plaster with a grain of 1.5 mm. A total of 2,500 m2 of facade insulation was installed. The beauty of facade insulation, Oostenbrug believes, is that you can upgrade both the insulation value and the appearance of a building and the comfort in the homes. "The white strips on the building and the eaves are part of the system we created: insulation with stucco," he said. 

Construction Team

The Prins Bernhardlaan Voorburg project is a construction team project that started in early 2019. Due to corona, the sale of the apartments came to a halt, until sales picked up again at the end of 2020. From then on, the construction team has been managed by project leader Robert Bijmolt of contractor Giesbers Rotterdam. As project leader, Bijmolt is responsible for bringing the transformation to a successful conclusion in all phases of the project. Like every project, this one also had its challenges. In this case, these were the new tenants in the commercial plinth. They remained in business during the renovation work on the first and second floors. Bijmolt: "These are organizations like a pharmacy and a doctor's office. You can imagine that drilling noise and other construction noise are far from always desirable." 

More sustainable

By applying modern facade systems, Sto Isoned wants to make the Netherlands a little more beautiful and sustainable. Niels Kempen, project manager at Sto, thinks that the building on Prins Bernhardlaan has become very beautiful. "It also feels very familiar that we see this kind of facade back in the projects." In addition to an insulated facade, the apartments are now gas-free and there are 280 solar panels on the roof of the former office building: five for each apartment. 

Improvisational ability and resourcefulness

For Bijmolt, a project like this is interesting because you have to be inventive not only as a builder, but also as a developer. "You always come across things in a transformation like this that you don't expect at first. You demolish a lot and then you definitely come across things that require improvisational skills." That, then, is what he sees as the added value of hiring IJsselmonde and Sto's technical underpinnings. "They are good at dealing with situations that don't go 'by the book.' IJsselmonde is a party that can work flexibly, and that is necessary here because we have to take into account organizations in operation. That requires provisions and clear agreements on phasing in the execution of this project." 

For IJsselmonde and Sto, the work is over. The overall project is in its completion phase and is expected to be delivered in late 2022 or early 2023.