Hilversum, the home of Radio Netherlands Worldwide, can boast one of the world’s most beautiful buildings according to the editors of Yahoo! Travel.

The building of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, which houses a museum covering the history of Dutch radio and TV at the entrance to the Media Park, is described as 'stunning' and is listed alongside such famous tourist attractions as The Golden Temple in Amritsar and the Chrysler Building in New York.

So what's so special about the building in Hilversum? Yahoo! Travel tells its readers that "The work of Jaap Drupsteen, the graphic artist responsible for the building-size media collage, used to be everywhere in the Netherlands. This building is his comeback. Along with architecture firm Neutelings Riedijk, he covered the façade of the massive media archive and museum with images from Dutch television, abstracted into a giant four-sided mural and baked directly onto cast glass."

Mesmerising
In 2007, an article in the New York Times said “The effect is mesmerizing. The images are only barely discernible from certain angles, as if the building were imprinted with the faint traces of shared memories. But the exterior facades are also a sly critique of contemporary culture. The blur of images conveys the daily bombardment from the Internet, television, movies and newspapers, yet here they seem frozen in time, as if temporarily tamed.”

Jaap Drupsteen worked as a graphic designer for broadcasters NOS and VPRO; he specialized in making leaders, music videos, and other video and television productions. He also designed the last series of banknotes before the guilder was replaced with the euro. In 1999, Mr Drupsteen was commissioned by the Dutch government to design a new passport, and he also designed several postage stamps.

Worldwide acclaim
But it’s his design for the exterior of the building in Hilversum that has captured the attention, and acclaim, of architects, artists and designers around the world. The architects for the whole project were Willem Jan Neutelings and Michiel Riedijk. On the website wikiarquitectura.com they explain how Jaap Drupsteen’s design for the glass was made into reality:

“The first challenge was choosing to freeze images in the panels. We made a section of frames that Jaap Drupsteen then transferred to a panel of MDF (medium density fibre), thanks to a printer created especially for this purpose. What was more difficult to provide was relief through the technique of Slumping Glass. This has a high durability and resistance to ultraviolet rays. The windows were covered with rubber ceramics, and placed in an oven at 820º C on a sand mold. At this temperature ceramic paste is able to burn the image on the glass.”

A wish for the future
On the website of architecture journalist David Keuning, Mr Drupsteen says he is happy with the project, but he does hope that the white façade behind the glass panels will eventually be coated with a layer of aluminium, as he intended. “Because the windows behind the panels are black, at the moment they really stand out against the white behind the coloured glass panels. Besides, the reflection of the clouds and the sky will be greater with an aluminium coating.”

The building was opened by Queen Beatrix in December 2006, and cost 60 million euros.

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