Evoluon

A flying-saucer-shaped building commissioned by Frits Philips in 1966 to celebrate the company's 75th anniversary. The Evoluon's concrete dome — 77 metres in diameter, resting on a single V-shaped support — was a genuinely radical piece of architecture when it opened, and it still looks like it landed from another planet.

Originally a wildly popular science and technology museum (it attracted half a million visitors a year in the 1970s), the Evoluon closed as a museum in 1989 and now operates as a conference and events venue. The interior is occasionally open during special events, but the building is primarily an exterior experience — the dome, visible from across southern Eindhoven, is the point. Located on the edge of the city near the ring road. A landmark of post-war Dutch optimism and Philips-era Eindhoven.

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A story
When the Evoluon opened in 1966, Frits Philips gifted it to the city of Eindhoven with the condition that it remain free to enter. For twenty-three years it was one of the most visited attractions in the Netherlands, drawing 500,000 visitors annually. When Philips withdrew its funding in 1989, the museum closed and the building became a conference venue — the condition about free entry quietly forgotten.

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