“The global home of human AI”: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz breaks ground for MVRDV-designed IPAI CAMPUS

On October 21st, 2025, the IPAI Konsortium – comprising the State of Baden-Württemburg, the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, Schwarz Gruppe, and the City of Heilbronn – celebrated the start of construction of the new campus of the Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence (IPAI CAMPUS). Located in Heilbronn, Germany, the 30-hectare campus will serve as an international hub for over 5,000 people working on the development of innovative and responsible AI solutions. Based on the principles of openness, collaboration, and sustainability, the campus will be an attractive place to work as well as a destination for curious visitors to engage with the development of world-changing technologies first hand. In recognition of IPAI’s significance in both the field of artificial intelligence and in its home country, the ground breaking ceremony was attended by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, alongside high-profile politicians at national, state, and city levels, as well as VIPs of the IPAI Konsortium.

Image © IPAI / MVRDV / Vivid

MVRDV’s masterplan design is defined by its distinctive circular shape, and by two off-centre axes. It envisages a business campus complete with laboratories, housing, and a central cultural building to communicate with the public. The first phase of construction includes many of the key buildings in the campus, and will form the core of the future campus, extending from the western edge of the circle to the communications centre and restaurant building, which define a public plaza at what will eventually be the centre point of the campus. In addition to the communications centre and restaurant, the phase includes the mobility hub, start-up and innovation centre, a sizeable “living lab”, and a ten-storey office building.

Communication Centre. Image © IPAI / MVRDV / Vivid

Restaurant. Image © IPAI / MVRDV / Vivid

“Working in AI is very technical; people spend a lot of time tied to their screens”, says MVRDV founding partner Jacob van Rijs. “We designed the IPAI CAMPUS as a counterweight to this, with a focus on wellbeing. The site will be car free, the landscape is green, and many of the buildings are tactile and made with visible organic materials. We did wind studies to ensure a pleasant microclimate in the public spaces, allowing people to take advantage of the facilities that will be there. It’s a design that really emphasises the ‘human’ part of IPAI’s mission to be the global home of human AI.”

Mobility Hub. Image © IPAI / MVRDV / Vivid

Start-Up and Innovation Centre. Image © IPAI / MVRDV

The buildings of IPAI are eclectic in character, with each one tailored to its own specialised programme. The communication centre, which will serve as the public heart of the campus with exhibitions, conferences, and seminars, is cylindrical, with an eye-catching reflective façade. The cream-coloured walls of the restaurant opposite are indented by orange “grotto façades” that create terraces for relaxation and socialising over a meal. The mobility hub, which serves as a central hub for logistics and infrastructure, welcomes arrivals with a spacious atrium. The living lab features offices on the southern edge, with a huge laboratory hall facing north onto the campus’ central plaza, with panoramic windows providing a view onto the tests being conducted inside. The bright red start-up and innovation centre provides an informal, collaborative atmosphere with its pitched roofs and central green meeting space. Finally, the office building features a pleated façade supporting a photovoltaic façade, while double-height social “living rooms” are available on each floor.

Living Lab. Image © IPAI / MVRDV

Since winning the campus design competition in 2023, MVRDV has developed the designs of each building through an intensive dialogue with the members of the IPAI Konsortium. With the goal of establishing sustainability as a core principle of the campus, the design process was accompanied throughout by MVRDV’s CarbonSpace tool, which allowed the design teams to measure the impact of their design decisions on embodied carbon and steer towards low-carbon designs. Through this process, a number of the projects now under construction were developed with lightweight and bio-based structures, such as the hybrid timber construction systems employed in the start-up innovation centre, the living lab, and the office building. In addition the campus, as well as the individual buildings of the communications centre, the start-up and innovation centre, and the office building will receive DGNB sustainability certification – targeting platinum certification – from the German Sustainable Building Council.

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The attendees of the IPAI CAMPUS ground-breaking ceremony included Friedrich Merz, chancellor of Germany; Dr. Karsten Wildberger, the German digital minister; Dorothee Bär, the German research minister; Winfried Kretschmann, minister-president of Baden-Württemberg; Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, the minister of economic affairs, labour, and housing for Baden-Württemberg; Harry Mergel, mayor of Heilbronn; Professor Reinhold R. Geilsdörfer, chairman of the board of the Dieter Schwarz Foundation; Moritz Gräter, CEO of IPAI; and Jacob van Rijs, founding partner of MVRDV.

See more of the IPAI CAMPUS at our project page or the IPAI Website.