MVRDV has designed what the firm describes as a “pointillist” master plan for a health and technology campus in the Dutch city of Nijmegen.

The project aims to reimagine the Noviotech Campus by unifying the currently disjointed campus buildings and adding new buildings in the empty spaces between them while merging the site into the surrounding city. The design team says it's taking an “ecology-first” approach by transforming the campus into a nature-inclusive landscape that connects the neighboring Goffertpark, one of the city’s largest green spaces, and the adjacent Jonkerbos War Cemetery to designated green corridors nearby. 

The master plan preserves six of the seven pre-existing large buildings on the site, including one that will be renovated. The buildings will serve as a grid into which new buildings are added over time over three phases of development. The campus aims to eventually expand to approximately three million square feet of leasable space. 

A green spine serving as the central route through the campus connects the site with the Goffert train station in the north to a zone of sports facilities being built south of the campus. 

The project employs a landscape strategy that establishes an assemblage of trees, shrubs, and flowers planted in overlapping circular patches. This results in what the firm notes as a “landscape of a million dots” that gives the campus its pointillist designation, while also providing a multifunctional landscape strategy. MVRDV worked with ecological advisors Faunest to bring this environment to life.

The buildings on the Noviotech Campus will be designed under MVRDV’s supervision following a variety of sustainability approaches. This includes providing carbon footprint guidelines, calling for the use of circular or bio-based materials, recommending adaptable and future-proof structures with long lifespans, advising for renewable energy production on-site, and proposing that the surrounding greenery continues onto the buildings’ façades and roofs.

“The master plan is designed to reintroduce these natural principles,” said MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas, who has also recently been selected as curator for the upcoming Van Gogh Homeland Biennale. 

“We follow the principles of forest gardening, and follow the seasons. We are trying to increase knowledge of planting mixtures; In the tradition of Mien Ruys and Piet Oudolf, we are now entering the phase of hyper-mixtures that aim to intensify and cultivate the complexity of nature on all fronts. My hope is that the Noviotech Campus will not only become part of Nijmegen's ecological infrastructure, but that it will in itself show the wonder and beauty of this new ‘man-made’ nature. The greenery also continues on the building façades and roofs, extending this blend of nature vertically as well as horizontally.”