Firm buildings small and bigger, stand shoulder to shoulder along green-blue roads. Tight building lines dictate the regularity of the façades, to which front a green zone of five meters adds up to the public space. Whereas the landscape is natural and water-rich based on the clayey subsoil of the riverbed of the Oude Rijn, the buildings are originally drawn rationally and angularly. Beautiful shoe boxes, expressing the motives and means of client and user.
Supervision improves the buildings in the Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP). In a balancing act between fixed and freedom, an urban layer added to buildings that are largely dictated by complex technology, by the high demands on density and broad ambitions in the field of sustainability. The urban planning supervision is detailed and at the same time comprehensive. Meticulously holistic.
LBSP is not just an innovation district. The largest and most elongated campus in the Netherlands is centrally located in a dynamic and expanding region. Cities and villages grow together to form an diverse urbanized landscape. The LBSP, traditionally a gray business park, intends to gain color. More red from buildings erected in high density. And at the same time more green through the rigorous landscaping of the public realm. Paths and roads are laid out in grassy profiles to intensify the experience of the increased amount of greenery. The area of more than 100 ha will also be more accessible, better integrated in the surroundings and larded with public facilities. From closed fortress to an open campus with plenty of room stay and to meet.
The Masterplanning for LBSP goes hand in hand with a clear conception of architecture. Buildings create space by clearly delineating it and thus underlining the publicity. The buildings are all-sided and with basic contours. Including all the building components within the main volume contributes to the openness of the campus. The buildings are strongly articulated, horizontally or vertically in order to distinguish themselves independently and stubbornly from their neighbors. Architect have all freedom in the choice of material and architectural expression, so that no time is wasted in dispute on architectural language. In principle, it are not the aesthetic aspects that are dominant, but the ergonomic ones.
Supervision in LBSP in fact is all about the relationship between man and his environment. In other words, the way buildings communicate. Approachable and touchable. A canopy above the entrance. Lettering at eye level instead of high over. Visual relation from the outside to the inside. The ultimate value of architecture lies in the use of all possible elements that provide an answer to that one question; What would you like yourself?
