Police location Eeindhoven: landscape and architecture ingeniously woven together

Eindhoven is faced with a novelty: a police location. The team of PosadMaxwan, cepezed, Huygen, ABT, Buiting Advies and Rod'or Advies won the tender to draw up a master plan for this. The aim is a green location where the police buildings, in all their complexity, are intertwined with the landscape.

clusters
The police stated in the tender stated that the various units that settle on the site will cooperate extensively. This concerns the Oost-Brabant unit, the Police Academy, the Police Services Centre and the services of the National Unit. Instead of each being housed in a separate building, the programmes will be clustered together. In the coming period, the design team and the police will specify the cohesion between and within these clusters. The buildings and green outdoor areas - at different heights - will be efficiently and logically distributed across the site.

unique task
Designing such a police location is a unique task, of which there are no examples yet. An important starting point for the new location in Eindhoven is the preservation of the existing ecology. Animals and plants should be able to stay, and people and fauna will soon be using the site together. The landscaped outdoor space is in line with the police's desire for more exchange and cross-pollination between units. A green public space invites students, police employees and guests to take a walk and meet each other outside.

challenge
From experience, cepezed knows that the police have a lot of ground-level programmes. Therefore, the design team introduced a layered ground floor and buildings with entrances on different floor levels. The challenge is to logically interweave these outdoor spaces and their respective elevations and to allow the surrounding landscape to naturally continue on these different levels. In addition, the police location must continue to meet the safety requirements and not saddle the residents of the neighbouring district with a view of high-rise buildings or an ugly fence.

integral design
The police location in Eindhoven will be biodiverse, climate-adaptive and nature-inclusive. The buildings on the site will be energy-efficient and circular. It will be an environment that invites cooperation and supports the functional processes of the users. A complex task, therefore, that calls for an integral design. For example, an embankment can have an ecological function, keep parked cars out of sight, and contribute to security at the same time.