In its earlier life, the government building De Knoop served as the headquarters of the Royal Netherlands Army. As one might expect from such a facility, it was no-nonsense building. It featured a heavy concrete construction, dark corridors, low ceilings and immovable brick partitions. Not and very fancy, but robust. These days, however, the building is spacious, open and filled with light. It is no longer populated by uniformed army staff, but by civil servants in casual business attire, who can be found engaging in brainstorming sessions in the buildings conference centre, sipping cappuccinos in the ground floor Grand , or tapping away on their laptops at one or other of conference centre the buildings many flexible workstations.visitors The transformation of the building was carried out viaworkstationsa public-private partnership (PPP), in which the Dutch government acted as the commissioning client, while a selected consortium of market parties (called R creators) was responsible for the design, financing and construction. The same consortium is responsible for the buildings maintenance and operation for a period of 20 years.internal area, incl. The governments original ambition was to turn the building into a generic government hub, available to any department of the Dutch central government but with the Dutch Tax Office as privileged user. In reality, the Dutch Tax office is the buildings main occupant. Bram van Wijk is the Tax Office contract manager for the project and he has been involved in the project from its inception. He explains: The building is designed according to government standards. This means that, in principle, any civil servant can work here. But we are the key tenant and we are using almost the entire building, including the general areas. This is because of the buildings central location and because a number of headquarter staff are located here. It is an extremely popular venue for meetings and many of the attendees then stay on to work here. So there isnt much room for anyone else.115