The Hague Netherlands Temple

Brief information

The Hague Netherlands Temple was built on a plot that was only slightly larger than the building itself. Because of this tightness, the garage and temple clothing store were placed beneath the temple rather than next to it. This immediately sets the main way to read the place: what matters here is not the breadth of the grounds, but the compact organization of functions within a single volume.

The temple is located in Zoetermeer, a satellite city of The Hague, on a site chosen in a city park. It was dedicated in 2002 as the 114th operating temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It serves members from the Netherlands, Belgium, and part of France, so the building, small in area, is connected not only with the local community.

What to notice right away

It makes sense to compare three physical details. The first is its position in a city park: the temple stands not on a large separate property, but within an already defined urban setting. The second is the compact plot, because of which service functions were moved under the building: the garage and temple clothing store are below, which explains the dense vertical organization. The third is the interior program: with a total area of 980 m², the temple includes two ordinance rooms and two sealing rooms.

These details show how the building solves several tasks at once on a limited site. Outside, what matters is not the scale of the plot, but the placement of the temple itself in a park setting; inside, it is the division of rooms for different church ordinances. The fact of the underground level changes the way one sees the volume: part of the temple’s arrangement is hidden not as a secondary addition, but as a response to the size of the plot.