The assignment of this graduation project was to design “The Vertical Campus: A Public Hub of the Future in The Hague”, a mixed-used building that contains public, university and (governmental) office spaces of about 30.000 m2.

My problem statement addressed the issues of well-being and mental health of students in higher education and how urban densification can be designed vertically with a mixed-use building program. This led me to the architectural concept of Biophilic Design and how nature can promote evidence-based wellbeing and academic performance.

Thus, my design proposal is called “Campus of Wellbeing: The Biophilic Knowledge Hub”. Hereby, I propose a design that is situated on the edge of the park (‘Koekamp’) in front of the Central Station of The Hague. It’s a fragmented structure, a green hybrid, that merges architecture and nature, and aims to dissolve the “Green Border” between city fabric and forest. This urban concept is accompanied by the design of the ‘Biophilic Space Catalogue’. In this catalogue, I’m presenting the conclusions from my literature research that resulted into the design of different architectural spaces dedicated to various user groups, ranging from public to students or nature.

On a technical level, I was looking into how materiality and a passive climate concept can support my approach of designing healthier spaces and how a large-scale building can contribute to a better urban climate despite densification. Besides that, with this project I was also experimenting with the structure to reach my design objective of having a low impact on the ground floor because of the project's sensitive environment being located in a park including various plant and animal species.