Mixity Schiphol Trade Park

The Schiphol Area Development Company (SADC) has tasked Karres en Brands, first with ARUP and now with The Architekten Cie, to develop a vision and spatial plan for a new typology of office and commercial precinct. One that is absolutely embedded in its social and landscape context and that will be guided by, and managed via, ambitious sustainability principles.

The Mixity site is unique. Adjacent to both a large scale logistics park (STP) and one of North Holland’s most important regional landscape heritage structures, the UNESCO listed Stelling van Amsterdam, Mixity will complement the growing city of Hoofddorp as a mixed use commercial, education, research and short-stay urban district. This district though is intended to focus on innovation and circularity. It will resemble a dense urban district but will be managed more like a campus with a highly dynamic program spread and shared across multiple buildings and urban quarters.

One of the key points of spatial differentiation for Mixity is its location adjacent to the Geniepark that runs along the defensive canal and dike formations of the Stelling. This park not only offers respite and recreation opportunities but its water management and ecological habitat framework extends into the urban grid to combine greenery, climate adaptive drainage systems with urbanity as key elements in the urban structure.

This urban framework has been designed to be as flexible as possible to future needs and program with the blue-green lines that structure the grid spaced to ensure plots are the ideal size for multiple uses (parking, commercial or eventually housing). These lines then become drivers of urban character and identity, act as ecological corridors, allow maximum permeability through the district and provide multiple building frontages.

Building upon sustainability mechanisms established in the adjacent logistics park, Mixity will join the collective energy production and management infrastructure and a collective heat and cold distribution network. The precinct will store, attenuate and re-use rainfall at a building, local and district level and will prioritise urban climate mitigation, ecological habitat and biodiversity provision as well as the use of bio-based building materials.