Days after BIG’s conceptual floating city idea was adopted by South Korea, the firm has unveiled its design for the European AI and Cybersecurity Hub on the ESET Campus in Bratislava, Slovakia. The 55,000-square-meter (590,000-square-foot) headquarters consists of twelve individual buildings organized around a central courtyard, with a form echoing the surrounding Carpathian Mountains.

The campus replaces a former military hospital on the site and will house ESET’s 1,500-strong workforce, who research and develop cybersecurity solutions. Mimicking the peaks of the nearby hills, low-lying buildings along the outer perimeter of the campus are designated as public spaces, while four taller buildings towards the center house ESET’s operations.

“Rather than a single hermetic entity, we have dissolved the ESET Campus into an urban village of interconnected buildings, framing public paths and urban squares,” explains Bjarke Ingels. “The diverse cluster of individual pavilions are unified by the undulating solar roofs — forming a single silhouette rising from the forested park like a man-made addition to the Little Carpathians mountain range."

Connecting the four central buildings is a focal-point courtyard serving the wider community. Public spaces housing retail, educational, sports, and cultural functions are scattered across the courtyard to create an active streetscape. Inside the ESET lobby, a cascading staircase connects the ground floor with upper levels, dotted with social spaces and biophilic infrastructure.

The campus will be powered by renewably sourced electricity, aided by PV panels lining the undulating roof and ground source heat pumps. The exterior façade system will be composed of timber and glass, while balconies will provide additional outdoor spaces, passive shading, and natural ventilation.

BIG was retained as the architect for the scheme following a winning competition entry in 2019, and will work alongside a team consisting of Inflow, Pantograph, BuroHappold, and ARUP. The campus is expected to break ground in 2024, with a planned opening in 2027.  

News of the scheme comes shortly after BIG announced a partnership with 3D printing specialists ICON, with the goal of building a 100-home neighborhood in Austin, Texas. The firm has also recently revealed their design for a new corporate headquarters in Porto, Portugal, which similar to the latest ESET scheme, adopts an undulating hillside form.