J.P. van Eesteren puts crown on work with completion of Naturalis

TBI company J.P. van Eesteren has officially completed the new Naturalis Biodiversity Center. The museum has been drastically expanded and modernized. The natural history museum only had to close for a year and will open its doors again in September. Part of the far-reaching project includes a new construction of the huge, public hall and exhibition areas and the construction of a completely new laboratory. In addition, the research facilities have been modernized.

Central to the design of the new building is the 40-meter-high glass crown facade by Neutelings Riedijk architects. This facade - like the interior of the museum constructed from sustainable materials - is the eye-catcher of the museum. The glass facade is composed of prefabricated concrete elements finished on the inside with oak wood. Naturalis chose to use materials that age naturally: natural stone, concrete, glass, steel and oak. For example, the exterior of the main building is partially finished in red natural stone.

T.rex Trix

The exhibition rooms are notable mainly for their sheer size. Walls are in some places 30 meters long, 300 mm thick and up to 14 meters high. The distance spanned without supporting pillars goes up to a maximum of 21 meters. All that space is needed, among other things, to accommodate large stuffed animals such as giraffes, elephants and sharks and various structures that are part of the newexperience. But the space is also there because Naturalis is the home of Trix, the giant skeleton of a T. rex.

Ton Vaags, chairman of the board of J.P. van Eesteren was closely involved in the project: "This was a project full of technical challenges. But that's the way we like them. We spent two years doing our homework: the extensive planning, including the coordination of the refurbishment that had to start before delivery, the specification documents, the technical co-design and finding the right partners: subcontractors and suppliers with the right materials. The result: a unique building of museum value."

Edwin van Huis, general director of Naturalis Biodiversity Center: "This completion is a wonderful milestone. We will continue to work hard in the coming period to move and furnish the exhibition rooms."

New construction and renovation

The new museum building and laboratory building now form a whole with the offices, the collection depots (which house a large part of 42 million objects in the collection) and part of the laboratories. The latter are located in the existing buildings, which have been updated both inside and out.