Berlaymont building

Berlaymont structure was created in 1969 as the headquarters of the European Commission, which is the executive of the European Union (EU). It was directly inspired by the 1958 secretariat structure of UNESCO in Paris (which was conceived by Marcel Breuer, Pier Luigi Nervi and Bernard Zehrfuss). The structure has a cruciform design with four wings of unequal size spanning from a central core. It was created on piles located beneath each wing, supporting a 40-metre high narrow ridge of concrete which in turn supported steel beams forming the frame of the glass frontage covering the prefabricated floors.