World's Greenest Office Building Is Dutch: The Edge

[Music] welcome to the edge this is certifiably the greenest office building in the

world but that just might be the least interesting part about it because the edge in Amsterdam is also possibly the most connected office space in the

[Music] world working at the edge is insane it all starts with a smartphone app developed by the building's main tenant the consulting firm

deoe when you arrive at the edge a camera recognizes you by your license plate for automatic access and because it's the Netherlands there are Chargers available for electric

[Music] cars inside things start to get interesting because you don't have a desk no one here does workspaces are

assigned to you based on your schedule for the day you have options a work Booth a meeting room what they call a concentration room a sitting desk a standing desk a balcony desk you can

even just hang out in the sunfill atrium all day this concept is called hot desking and it's what allows deoe to have 2500 workers but less than half as many desks

at its Dutch headquarters the app knows your preferences and when you arrive at your workspace the lights dim or brighten based on your stored settings and any of the build building's massive flat

screens can be instantly paired with an iPhone or a laptop so what makes all this possible the LED light panels developed by Phillips specifically for the edge

are actually powered by low voltage ethernet cables which means every light in the building becomes its own internet connected data Hub with 288,000 sensors

that makes the building and its users smarter the building becomes a very important part of who we are and what we want to be and we actually seen in recruitment that more people are now

spontaneously coming to the Lo because they want to work in this building oh yeah and then there's these the building has solar on the roof and on the south facing wall enough to power

the building and all of the electric cars computers and smartphones used by its employees and those employees are kept warm by two enormous bore holes

tunneling more than 400 100 ft down beneath the building during the summer The Edge pumps warm water deep into the aquafer where it sits insulated until it

can be sucked back out in the winter to warm the building outside there are beehive towers and bat homes to support the local pollinators and even the rain

water is collected to flush the toilets and irrigate the gardens we uh are planning to build a lot more buildings like these and the next one will be smarter and the one

after that will be smarter as well and we won't stop until all cities in the world are filled with buildings that are intelligent and that are not using any energy anymore in the end we will actually need less buildings in the

world but the buildings that are there will be used in a better way will be more efficient and we'll be uh we'll be using a lot less energy than in the [Music]

past sometimes the edge just feels like it's showing off and some of the app functionality isn't quite ready for prime time yet but most of the time this is all running seamlessly in the

background it's maybe the most fully realized vision of The Internet of Things the world has ever seen it's a building that has sustainability as an important aspect of

making a good place to work in Dutch there is even a word for this new kind of thinking about the workspace that new AA in a nutshell it means that um work

space is more focused on the tasks that need to be done and the working community that it's part of another day at the edge comes to an

end a Custom Security robot that looks a bit like R2-D2 wakes up and begins its patrols now if only the app could automatically come conjure up a nice dinner recipe maybe provide all the

fresh ingredients at the end of the day to get you cooking no surprise The Edge has that too bone appetit [Music]