EDGE Insider: Building a New Piece of the City, EDGE Eindhoven with Imardo de Blok

When Imardo de Blok talks about buildings, he rarely starts with materials or architecture. He starts with people. As Senior Development Manager at Edge, he has spent the last seven years turning a parking lot beside Eindhoven Central Station into the city's most ambitious mixed-use development. As the project nears completion, it is worth asking what it took to get here, and what it offers the businesses and residents who will move in.

A fascination that became a profession

I was always fascinated by buildings. When I was young, I always wanted to sit on the right side of the car because it gave me the best view of the city. On holidays, I wanted to visit churches, landmarks, and remarkable buildings.

That led him to study the built environment, learning the real systems and processes behind developments.

A building creates a place. It creates an environment for people to live, work, and make memories. What interested me most wasn't only the building itself, but understanding how it comes into existence and what impact it has on the city.

Responsibility, early

What surprised him most about Edge was how quickly responsibility arrived. He joined as a graduation intern researching circular-economy principles for the Triodos Bank development, expecting mostly to observe. Instead, he found himself contributing to real decisions.

Even as a starter, you can make a real impact. Edge gives young professionals a lot of responsibility.

That culture, innovation, entrepreneurship, and a willingness to challenge convention is what kept him there, and what eventually led him to head the development of EDGE Eindhoven.

And EDGE Eindhoven is no single building dropped onto an empty site. It is the transformation of one of the city's most strategic gateways, the plot beside Eindhoven Central Station, from a car park into a working district of offices, homes, public space, and greenery.

What makes EDGE Eindhoven meaningful is not its scale, but its role in the city. Located at one of Eindhoven's most strategic gateways, it was conceived not as a standalone building but as a new piece woven into the city's fabric. It's a super complex inner-city development, and that's where I really learned how development works.

Designing for Connection

If the first challenge was creating a new destination within Eindhoven, the second was defining how people would experience it.

At the heart of EDGE Eindhoven sits a large green atrium, filled with daylight and greenery, that brings together tenants, visitors, and residents in a single shared space.

It's the social connector of the building. It's a huge green space, and we placed it at the heart of the building as the main driver of social connection, health, and placemaking.

We create circumstances for innovation. Buildings should be enablers.

For Imardo, innovation rarely happens in isolation; it happens when people meet, exchange ideas, and spend time together.

The same philosophy extends beyond office users. The municipality encouraged residential functions alongside office space to create a genuinely mixed-use district.

The goal was to avoid creating an area that's only active during working hours. By combining residential and office functions, the neighborhood stays vibrant throughout the day, evening, and weekend.

The result addresses two pressing needs in Eindhoven at once: high-quality office space and much-needed housing. "We're filling a gap in both markets." More importantly, it gives the area a rhythm of its own, one that continues long after the working day has ended.

EDGE Eindhoven Approaches Completion

With completion set for Q3 2026, what lived for years as drawings and decisions becomes a working building: 175 homes, offices filling with teams, an atrium that turns into a meeting point by default.

For Imardo, the building was never only about square metres. It was about creating a framework that, once complete, supports an entirely new way of living and working in the heart of the city. That ambition is already drawing interest: tenants are signing on well ahead of completion, proud to soon call EDGE Eindhoven their home or their office.

The placemaking has started too. As an official partner of GLOW 2025, EDGE Eindhoven marked its topping-out by becoming one of the festival's largest light installations, turning a construction milestone into a moment that brought the city together and tied the building to Eindhoven's spirit of innovation before a single tenant had moved in.

That transition, from site to lived-in landmark, is what excites Imardo most.

I want people to feel proud of where they work. In our own office at EDGE Olympic, it feels like a second living room. It's where I do my best work. I hope people feel the same way when they come here.

For Imardo, a building's success is rarely measured on opening day. It is measured years later, when people have folded it into their routine without thinking about it, when it stops being a development and starts being part of the city.