Our moving adventure: from the Splendorfabriek to the Vasim!

Finally! Last Friday the 10th of November was the day. We left our beloved old office in Splendorfabriek behind to start a new chapter in a brand new office in the Vasim. After months of preparation, planning and odd jobs (while the old office kept falling apart), we finally started working in our new place this week. We are very proud of the result and are happy to take you through the adventure that started two years ago.

From the moment Ewout and Roland started 10KB, the office has been in one of the rooms of the Splendorfabriek in Nijmegen. In the beginning, that was still a relatively small office. After staff expansion, they decided to rent the space next door as well (and break open the partition wall), but after eight years we started to outgrow that too. Two years ago, this created a clear desire: we were looking for a nice, spacious office, which above all does not look too much like an office. Anything on an industrial estate was out of the question, and suspended ceilings were a definite no-go. After searching for over a year, we found the perfect location: the Vasim in Nijmegen.

It is a building with an extensive history and character to match. Just after World War II, the Vasim was built in 1948 as part of the NYMA synthetic silk spinning mill. From 1985, the building took on a new function to which it still owes its name today. In the 15 years that followed, the building was used as a fly ash factory under the name VliegAsSInterMaatschappij. The empty factory building was reoccupied in 2002 with yet another new function: as a creative breeding ground, it housed over 40 artists and cultural companies from the Stichting Cultuurspinnerij. The municipality of Nijmegen has been racking its brains about the future of this special building for years. In 2008 they started collecting new ideas, in 2012 the municipality decided it would become a war museum, but two years later that plan was called off again. By 2020, the plans were finally clear: the entire NYMA site will emerge as a new hotspot of Nijmegen. Building on the roots of the Cultuurspinnerij, there will be space for culture, creative entrepreneurship, sports, events and catering. We are honoured to be a part of it.

When we were told over a year ago that we could start converting one of the arches into our office, there was a lot of remodelling to do. Our future space was simply a (very spacious) concrete box of about 300m2 and about 11 metres high. To prevent it from remaining a cold, barren, acoustic nightmare, we started talking to an architect. At the end of October 2022, Bob Romijnders came up with a beautiful plan that perfectly matched our original wish. An open, bright, spacious and green office. Divided over two floors, the desks are on the upper floor, and the ground floor has plenty of space to relax, eat and drink, play games or talk to each other. That 'second living room' feeling that we love will once again permeate this office.

After weeks of emailing contractors, asking for dozens of quotes and getting lots of "oh, we need someone to do that too" we decided to work with MVL. MVL specialises in metal engineering and were keen to build the steel structure. They were also very good at thinking about the other parts of the construction and finding suitable specialists for us. With just a steel structure, we were clearly not there yet. We had to build walls, paint walls, lay floors and install glass walls. Van Berkum helped us to think about the indoor climate and to find sustainable solutions that would allow us to cool and heat this space as efficiently as possible. We were also able to do a lot ourselves. The colleagues who like to do odd jobs (every now and again) have hung dozens of lamps, painted metres of skirting boards, finished two staircases, painted window sills and, above all, stood on scaffolding a lot (that's what you do when your lowest ceiling is four metres high). It was a time of toil, but together we got closer and closer to our goal.

From the moment the plans for the new office became more concrete, our old office started to show signs of decay. The printer broke down (we're not buying a new one as we're moving soon anyway), the grinder on the coffee machine stopped working (we'll buy ground beans as the new office will have a fancy new machine anyway) and in the last six months the power went out for longer periods over four times. In other words, our timing couldn't have been better! And it made us all look forward to the 'cool new place' even more!

The day before the move, a small group of us packed the old office into boxes. It turned out that there were quite a few memories (and things) that had been stored away over the years. Lunch that day had to be taken outside as Robin packed the whole kitchen at breakneck speed. By the end of the day, all the computers and screens had been unplugged and we were ready to move.

The moving day itself was also a big challenge. At 8.45 a.m. we gathered at the Splendorfabriek for the last time. In the latest manifestation of Murphy's Law, the goods lift had broken down that morning. Fortunately, we had hired a moving company, but because of the broken lift, loading took a little longer than expected. We are also on the first floor at the Vasim. We were lucky that our neighbours Vasim Events have two large goods lifts that we were allowed to use. After a day of lugging, screwing and unscrewing desks and unpacking lots of boxes, we were finally ready. At the end of the day we all toasted to the new office and tried out the new music system. We can't wait for this place to become our new home!