CONO Kaasmakers

This is an extraordinary factory. It houses a pre-fixed layout of technical installations to make cheese. The ‘only thing’ Jongerius had to do was design the outer skin. To create the current composition of cubes he had to rearrange the big kettle to the centre and move smaller installations to the side. The building-mass was moulded and sculptured and dressed with an inner-cloth of non-transparent industrial panels of insulated glass and an outer-fabric of synthetic profiles, hardened glass and aluminum panels. The in between steel construction is clearly visible from the outside. Shifting parts of these ‘sheets’ open the building, or closes it, tailored to fit the right angle, daylight entrance, sound isolation, external view or interior insight onto the pride of local dairy farmers: the kettle. The changing height of the volumes correspond to the 19th century idea of rational order; the renaissance. This way the building relates to its Unesco-listed environment, the Beemster polder.