Competition · Infopark, Budapest · 2024

Interior design competition for a research campus

A competition entry, by invitation, for the interior design of a 48,000 m² research campus.

The brief

A molecular research centre is being built on the Infopark university campus in Budapest: laboratories, clinical diagnostics, a biobank, offices and a nursery on one site, 48,000 m² in all. The technical demands are extreme — vibration-isolated optical clean rooms, laser laboratories with 4.5 m clear height, cryogenic sample storage, liquid nitrogen logistics through the underground garage.

The interior task followed from that: where technology decides everything, order has to be made in the space left for people. A researcher spends most of the day not in the laboratory but between laboratories — at a desk, in a corridor, over coffee, in a meeting.

The answer

The campus we proposed is not one kind of workplace but four: bench, desk, meeting, break. Each takes a different acoustic and visual register, and the transitions between them are the point.

In the laboratories and open offices, structure and services stay exposed. In a research building that is not a stylistic decision: routes will change, and whatever is boxed in now has to be cut open later.

Colour is carried by the floor. Orange on the laboratory levels, neutral in the offices — the finish tells you which kind of space you are in before you read anything.

The register turns in the shared spaces. A lit ring of timber battens sits above the café; in the lecture room a slatted timber ceiling and fabric curtains soften the large glazed wall. These are the only warm surfaces in the scheme, and they are exactly where people stop.

Planting runs through all of it: a green wall behind reeded glass at reception, trees in the atrium, planted desk dividers in the offices. In a laboratory building, plants are the one element that cannot be sterilised, standardised or swapped — which is why they carry the contrast here.

What it took

In a research building, interior design works in what is left over. Clean room clear height, vibration isolation, ventilation cross-sections and technical routes all come before the interior drawings — there is no depth left for a ceiling void, walls cannot move, floor build-ups are fixed.

That produced the governing principle of the proposal: conceal nothing that will have to be opened again. Where concealment was needed, acoustically or visually, it had to be a demountable system rather than plasterboard.

Data

Location: Infopark, Budapest
Year: 2024
Type: Research campus — laboratory, clinic, biobank, offices
Campus size: 48,000 m² gross
Our role: Interior design competition entry, by invitation
Status: Competition entry

Research laboratory visualisation: orange resin floor, white benches with microscope and monitors, exposed ductwork overhead, full-height glazing — Orange floors on the laboratory levels; services stay exposed.

Open office visualisation: timber desks with planted dividers, green wall behind, reeded glass partition, exposed structure — Open office: planted desk dividers, green wall, reeded glass.

Café visualisation: a lit ring of timber battens above the round counter, plants, low armchairs and round tables along the glazed facade — A lit ring of timber battens above the café.

Lecture room visualisation: slatted timber ceiling, fabric curtains in front of the large glazed wall, rows of chairs on terrazzo — In the lecture room, timber and fabric soften the glazing.

Director office visualisation: dark timber desk, built-in lit bookshelf, large calligraphic artwork, patterned round rug — The fourth register: a closed, quiet desk.

Competition visualisations, not a built project

Ren Design is a Budapest interior design studio that has worked across Europe, the Gulf and South America. On this project it produced the interior design competition entry for the campus, by invitation.