The stair beat the lift
Six months after moving in, the client's badge data showed a third of all inter-floor trips take the garden stair. Nobody wrote a policy — the section did the persuading.
Work / 03Headquarters · Brainpark, Rotterdam
Our first completed tower: a compact headquarters where a garden climbs the building — one double-height void spiralling from plinth to crown.
88 m22 floorsCompleted2025
01 / The briefWhat the city asked
The brief.
Brainpark was built as an office park you drive to, and the brief read that way: floor plates, parking ratio, done. We argued the site could carry a different ambition — a building that gives a campus park its vertical counterpart, and gives the tenant stairs worth taking.
The answer is the helix: a double-height garden void that steps up one face of the tower, two floors at a time, turning as it climbs. Every workfloor touches green twice — once at its own level, once looking down into the void it shares. The stair through the gardens is the busiest route in the building.
Elevation studySheet 03 · Helix HQ
88 m,
drawn.
Every VANTA sheet marks the same three lines — plinth, datum, crown. This is Helix HQ from its own street corner, raised the way it will be built.
02 / CraftDrawn once, built 22 times
The details that carry it.
Gardens with real trees
Each void carries 65 cm of soil on a strengthened slab edge — enough for six-metre multi-stem trees, not planter shrubs. The structure paid for it; the photographs earn it back weekly.
A crown that works late
The top garden doubles as the company forum. On launch nights its light is visible from the ring road — the building's own notification.
Brainpark, Rotterdam — 88 m above the street.
We hired for two years on the strength of the stair alone. People walk in and understand the company.
COO, Helix Technologies
Datum One