Our office was asked by the Leiden University to see how the identity and spatial quality of the Leiden Bioscience Park (LBSP) could be improved to better reflect the ambitions of its companies and institutions. The current park lacks legibility and intimate spaces. The question was to strengthen the existing master plan through small strategic spatial interventions.
A series of proposals were presented in a series of interviews with leading researchers, entrepreneurs and policy makers active at the LBSP. The design proposals were subsequently fine-tuned based on a precise understanding of the inner working of the users of the bioscience park.
The final proposal were designed to facilitate public private partnerships and improve collaboration between companies, which is currently lacking. Realization of the project was planned to coincide with Leiden’s bid for the European City of Science.
The upper floors are conceptually understood as the universal part of the program with clients of international hotels, meeting rooms and sustainability measures. This part of the building is executed with precast concrete elements in a generic grid structure. The architectural tension between the base and the upper layer thus symbolizes the position of our contemporary culture which always consists of place-specific and universal influences.
