A look inside Tinbergen: ‘You wouldn’t say so now, but it’s going to be beautiful’

Nora van der Schoor

6 November 2025

EM TV

A few days after the brief fire in the Tinbergen Building on 16 October, EM was given a tour of the iconic structure on campus. How is the years-long renovation progressing, and how did the fire happen?

You can hardly miss it: right in the middle of campus, the Institutenlaan has been taken over by a massive construction site, where builders work day in, day out to transform Tinbergen into a new, modern university building. The project will take years and costs 132 million euros. But what exactly is happening inside? And what does it look like?

“Look, an extra floor will be added here, entirely made of glass”, says Dennis Krol, director of construction company Heerkens van Bavel Bouw, standing on what is currently the top floor of the Tinbergen Building. Equipped with helmets, safety vests and steel-toed boots, he and Marcel Quanz from Real Estate & Facilities guide EM around the construction site, where about sixty builders are at work. A large external lift takes you up to the sixteenth floor. From there, you climb the stairs to the eighteenth floor, where the new nineteenth floor will soon be added. “This will house executive education and a restaurant”, says Quanz.

Six thousand bat nests

The roof is still open, so the builders are fully exposed to the weather. Soon, scaffolding will be built around the eighteenth floor so that workers can construct the extra glass level. Building scaffolding up from the ground is not an option, because bats live in the façade of the building. The campus is positioned along their nightly route, Quanz explains. The bats sleep and nest in the holes in Tinbergen’s façade. “There are about five to six thousand nesting spots here”, Quanz says. Bats are a protected species and must not be disturbed. Scaffolding from the ground up would cause too much vibration, which could make the animals fall while sleeping upside down.

The Tinbergen building is one enormous bat enclosure
Gepubliceerd op: 10 August 2023
- Weeds is a verdict

It’s not the only challenge the construction company faces. Tinbergen is a municipal monument built in the brutalist style, so certain elements of the building must be handled with great care. The concrete, for instance, has protected status. Years of paint and plaster must therefore be carefully removed without damaging the concrete underneath.

More light and more space

Many of the floors used to be filled with offices. These ‘standard’ floors will make way for teaching areas and smaller lecture halls. The layout is being completely redesigned, with much more glass, so that you will soon be able to see from one side of the floor to the other and enjoy more daylight throughout the building.

“You wouldn’t say so now, but it’s going to be beautiful”, says Krol, inspecting the concrete walls on the sixteenth floor that have been stripped of decades of plaster and paint. The space has been completely gutted—only the bare framework of the floor remains. On one side, the windows have been removed.

Fire on sixteenth floor of Tinbergen building, no injuries
Gepubliceerd op: 16 October 2025
- Campus

Fire on the sixteenth floor

“Look, this is how the fire started”, says Krol, pointing to several rusted drainpipes lying on the floor. “A worker was sawing through the pipes when a spark landed on some insulation material.” That caused a fire, which the same worker quickly extinguished. Water on burning insulation material creates a lot of smoke. On top of that, it happened in a narrow shaft that was open at the top. “That creates a kind of chimney effect”, Quanz explains.

According to the schedule, the building will be ready to reopen in the middle of 2027.