Completion of the new Faculty of Science building and Universum (the university sports centre), as well as commencement of work on Amsterdam University College, represents a significant step taken by the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in the further development of the Science Park as the location where knowledge, innovation and entrepreneurship come together. This project’s completion also represents an initial milestone in the accommodation plan, which envisages a single science faculty for all natural science disciplines that were once spread across various buildings in the city. In a few years’ time, when the Roeterseiland social science cluster and the Binnengasthuisterrein arts cluster are also ready, the UvA will also use these locations to combine the benefits of the city with those of an ‘open city campus’, where university and city form a single interwoven fabric.

The Science Park was once a polder with private gardens where rich residents of Amsterdam would retire to their country homes and manors. The Anna Hoeve is now the only remaining link to the past: this monumental farm, built in the early twentieth century on the property of an old country house, will soon be home to a restaurant.

After the Second World War, the Nuclear Physics Research Institute (the predecessor of what is now the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics, NIKHEF) was the first to establish itself in a science building on the polder. The FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) followed in around 1960, and at the end of that decade part of the Faculty of Biology also settled at the Watergraafsmeer.

Science Park Amsterdam is now one of the leading projects in the development of the Amsterdam knowledge infrastructure and economy, and occupies a strong position in the field of scientific research, life sciences and ICT. The Faculty of Science (FNWI), which completed its move to the Science Park in 2010, works intensively with other institutes in the area such as AMOLF, NIKHEF, SARA Computing and Networking Services, the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), etc.