A tribute to the city of The Hague

The Wijnhaven Quartier at a height of 50 metres, designed by the architectural firm Geurst & Schulze, is a skilful visual statement in The Hague. The building complex, which was completed in 2016, also brings advantages to the city from an infrastructure perspective. For example, 170 apartments and penthouses, catering establishments, shops and offices as well as a branch office of the University of Leiden are housed on a total of 15,000 m². The flat construction and the lowest level of the high-rise building are used commercially.

From the previous office complex of two ministries from the seventies, only the load-bearing concrete structure of the former high-rise building remained and was integrated into the new Wijn-haven district. The eye-catching feature is the approximately 12,500 m² ventilated facade, which was clad with individually pigmented and coloured “Royal Mosa ceramic tiles” - a custom-made product developed and produced specifically for this project – and designed with open joints. Designed according to customer requirements and thus unique in the world, the ceramic clothing materials are a unique selling point of Mosa’s offering on the market. The building envelope visually refers to the sandy ground on which the Wijnhaven quarter is situated, as well as to the nearby beach and The Hague as the “beautiful city behind the dunes”.

“Our undercut anchors convinced the client because they combine secure hold with a representative appearance of the facade,” reports Detlef Postler, Technical Project Support at the subsidiary SystemTec within the fischer group of companies, which supported the project. “This means that the fastening with the undercut anchors is not visible in favour of a harmonious facade viewing side – a clear advantage over the staple solutions commonly used for ceramic panels.” This aesthetic advantage combined with the durability, sustainability and ease of maintenance of the ceramic panels made Mosa stand out compared to other suppliers. “The positive-locking and therefore completely expansion-pressure-free anchoring in the tapered undercut hole ensures lower plate bending moments compared to the alternative solutions on the market,” Postler continues. “On the back of the panel, the anchor can be positioned at the fifth point, thus optimising the fastening statically.” This allows facades to be planned and designed more flexibly and the technical properties of the cladding material to be fully utilised.