UCo is a national center for sustainable entrepreneurship in Utrecht, built inside a derelict Dutch Railways train depot. We took it on as our own initiative, a continuation of the earlier Rotterdam Collective, and rebuilt it as a working example of the circular economy.
It opened in 2017 with 1,800 square metres of shared workspace, indoor ecosystems, recycled materials, and daylight where there had been a dark shed. The building runs energy and water neutral, the highest performance for an adaptive-reuse heritage building in the Netherlands, and probably in Western Europe. More than 180 organisations work there now.
A condemned train depot, now energy-neutral and full of 180 companies building the circular economy.