Schiphol Catalyst Office

The Challenge

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol's business precinct was expanding rapidly. Schiphol Real Estate needed a new approach to office development: one that would set a global benchmark for sustainability while enhancing integration with the surrounding neighborhood and creating lasting value.

The brief went beyond conventional green building. The goal was a genuinely catalytic structure: a building that would transform the resource flows and ecological performance of the entire 50,000 m² business precinct around it, not just minimize its own footprint.

Applying SiD

Except partnered with Schiphol Real Estate and brought together over 70 stakeholders and experts. Using the Symbiosis in Development (SiD) framework, the team co-developed actionable and measurable performance goals that far exceeded existing sustainable building benchmarks such as BREEAM and WELL.

The goals were organized into measurable categories: energy, materials, ecosystems and biodiversity, culture, economy and logistics, and health and well-being. Five overarching ambitions guided the work:

• Position Schiphol CBD as the national center for globally-focused companies
• Achieve world-class sustainability performance
• Craft an outstanding experience for residents and travelers
• Create a healthy, vibrant, and comfortable working environment
• Contribute to the sustainability of the broader community

A Catalytic Building

The Schiphol Catalyst Office concept consists of a core structure with offices, business spaces, parking facilities, and public spaces organized within the same area. The lower layers are dedicated to parking and water storage.

The upper level is a lush elevated landscape and ecosystem, contained in a transparent enclosure that addresses Schiphol's restrictions on birdlife while allowing control over the elements. Multiple stilted office pavilions sit within this indoor parkland, flexible enough for cyclical renovation and relocation. Each company can express its identity through specially designed modular building blocks set on columns, keeping the park level completely open.

What makes this concept genuinely catalytic is its metabolism. The entire structure creates multiple closed-loop resource flow loops in the local area, tapping into waste flows from neighboring buildings rather than importing all resources. It goes beyond the usual solar panels and greywater systems to transform its surroundings through the very act of operation.

Adaptive and Future-Proof Design

The workspace breaks from convention. Rather than rows of desks behind partition walls, the concept offers an array of workspaces surrounded by extensive internal ecosystems. Tenants can reconfigure their environment to suit changing needs over time, using lightweight modular building blocks designed for constant redevelopment. A glass canopy protects these structures and enables a biodiverse environment complete with mature trees that would otherwise not be allowed given the proximity to an airport.

In conjunction with Schiphol Group, the team investigated accommodating an eventual increase in demand, scaling to an expansive 20,000 m² of multifunctional floor space. This flexibility creates inherent value in both the short and long term, ensuring the building adapts to different companies and market conditions.

A Business Model Rooted in Health

During the research phase, the relationship between health measures and employee performance proved striking. The resulting concept design showed the ability to boost employee performance by over 10%. Since employee costs are the dominant expense for tenants, this factor alone ensured a return on investment for the entire development.

Self-sufficiency was achieved across multiple domains through the co-creation programs: energy and waste systems, water collection and reuse, partial food production, resiliency to market demands, and cultural development.

Outcomes

Modeling demonstrated that connecting the initial 10,000 m² building's energy, water, and waste systems to the surrounding precinct boosted the circularity and sustainability of the entire 50,000 m² neighborhood. The Catalyst concept represents a new building typology: not merely less harmful, but actively regenerative.

Key SiD Methods Used

• ELSI framework for six-domain sustainability goal-setting
• System mapping of building and district resource flows
• Stakeholder co-creation with 70+ participants
• Circular economy principles applied at precinct scale
• Solutioning for catalytic building design