New office building for Geosciences

For the staff and masterstudents of the faculty of Geosciences a new office building has been realized and is connected to the entrance area of ​​Utrecht Castel. Begin February, the building has been completed. Mid 2018 all staff will take the building into use. The building accommodates a restaurant and bicycle parking facilities, which will be shared with TNO and Deltares, as well as one floor of office space that can be developed in the future. The new building has been designed by architectural firm Inbo.

Flexible working environment

A great deal of work has gone into ensuring that the office spaces will be as flexible as possible. All the floors will be almost identical, which will make it simpler to accommodate fluctuations in staffing levels. An office concept has been chosen that can incorporate more workplaces without needing to carry out any further alteration work. These work stations will be flexible (able to be used by several people), because for some of the workplaces the associated office storage facilities are not in the same room. The installations were designed on the basis of 110 work stations on each floor and 100% occupancy. It was decided to build a system of ‘service channels’ into the floor of each level. In principle, this enables the work stations in each office to be equipped with data and power connections without the need for any external cabling.

Sustainability level 'Excellent'

The design complies with the current BREEAM-NL sustainability standard for new buildings at ‘Excellent’ level (4 out of 5 stars). This is consistent with the ambitions of Utrecht University.