Mirai House by UNStudio

They've settled on Leiden, Holland. The new laboratories and offices of the Japanese pharmaceutical company Astellas, designed by UNstudio, the Amsterdam-based architecture firm. The choice of the city has a reason: Leiden is a national leader in the Netherlands for research and activities relating the bio-medical sciences.

Security is a fundamental aspect in this field and that’s why the new building has such a particular design: instead of confining and fortifying the structure, security has been considered inclusively, by creating a frame serving as an unconcealed enclosure.
The building is divided into three areas of varying heights, encircling the inner courtyard garden:  there are offices on a side, laboratories on the other side and a large entrance lobby in between to comfortably welcome both employees and national and international visitors.

 

All the work location is open and transparent due to the usage of glass façades, which allow to provide sufficient daylight and create open visual communication and a transparent work environment within the construction. The intelligent usage of lamellas incorporated on each level of the façade avoid to have direct sunlight. The glass panes are further coated to additionally reduce the heat load to the interior. On the Northern side, where the sun is less prevalent, floor to ceiling glass is employed with 4 cm deep lamellas  growing to 20-30 cm on the South and East/West sides where sun becomes more widespread. Overall energy use is also diminished by the green roof at the entrance, and thanks to an underground storage system.
Like the inner garden, also the colors used for the façade which join up the Japanese manga  animation, are used to link the building to the provenance of the company.The whole building, created on the university campuses idea, has also a sunken parking garage and a restaurant with a roof terrace.

July 31, 2013