The new head office of the European Patent Office, designed by Jean Nouvel, is located in Rijsvijk, close to La Haye. It is housed in a long and narrow building known as the ‘Hinge Building’, from a height of 107 meters. It's one of the highest and the thinest buildings of Netherlands. 

The chosen site ‘represents the distinguishing feature of the Dutch polder, with the horizontality of a frozen sea... The proposal’s aim is to set into this land-bound harbourside world a flagship on a noble scale and with noble proportions that also has a disturbing materiality and is completely geometrically abstract.’ The building will take on ‘the colour of the sky through the faintly shimmering clear glass sheets of its façades and the stainless steel of the horizontal lines that punctuate it’.  
Jean Nouvel  

Jean Nouvel is an architect of international reputation. He realizes buldings worldwide, like the Qatar National Museum in Doha. Among many prizes and rewards, he receveid the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2008. 

The European Patent Office (EPO) is an organisation in charge of the search and examination of patent applications and the grant of European patents. It also provides patent information and training services. The EPO is part of the European Patent Organisation, an intergovernmental organisation created in 1977.