ING Headquarters
A context-responsive architecture within historic Ghent -- a stone-like base transitioning to crystalline upper volumes, bridging heritage materiality and contemporary corporate identity.
Located in the historic city of Ghent, Belgium, the ING Bank Headquarters by Asymptote Architecture is a project that responds simultaneously to the city’s rich architectural heritage and its fine-grained urban context. Situated on a site of former railway yards adjacent to the distinctive Gent-Sint-Pieters station, the building is conceived as a modern architectural statement rooted in place and tradition.
Design Concept
The design draws on Ghent’s revered masonry buildings and the region’s long history of brickmaking, stonecraft, and diamond cutting. This lineage informed a conceptual process rooted in materiality — carving the architectural massing into a multi-story crystalline volume clad in a stone-like base that supports a soaring vertical form above.
Urban Response
Urban design guidelines dictated an articulated, solid tectonic form facing the street edge, while the plaza side called for minimal articulation and open spatial expression. In response, the architecture transitions from weighty, textured forms at the street side to a more transparent, refined expression toward the public plaza.
Parametric Façade System
The masonry base is built as a custom parametric unit system in which every cladding element is individually defined and the fenestration openings are integrated directly into the assembly rather than punched through it after the fact. Masonry and glazing are designed and fabricated together as a single parametric envelope, so the building reads as a continuous ceramic surface while still meeting the daylight, thermal, and structural performance requirements of a contemporary office building. The system was developed with advanced computational scripting and fabricated in GFRC with Fibrobeton — a contemporary re-reading of Ghent’s long brickmaking and stonecraft tradition.
Program & Identity
Internally, the headquarters accommodates collaborative and public functions, including an auditorium, cafe, and exhibition space for ING’s prestigious art collection, all anchored around flexible workspace zones. The result is an architectural language that honors Ghent’s past while projecting a civic and corporate identity for the present and future.
Press
The completed building was the cover feature of PLAN Magazine (Belgium), Issue 12, January–March 2021 — the “35 Belgian Top Projects” special edition.
