Overview
A collaboration between Dundee City Council and RSK Group companies SCP Transport, Stephenson Halliday and Copper Consultancy has delivered a coordinated wayfinding and signage strategy for two of Dundee’s key employment locations: the Life Sciences Innovation District (BioDundee Central) and Claverhouse Business Park.
Bringing together movement planning, landscape design and brand-led wayfinding, the project creates a clearer, more legible experience for visitors, staff and investors, while supporting Dundee’s wider innovation, inward investment and identity ambitions.
The challenge
Both sites play an important role in Dundee’s economic ecosystem but had evolved over time without a coherent approach to wayfinding. Signage was inconsistent, visibility from surrounding roads was limited, and navigating the sites could be difficult for first-time visitors. Multiple occupiers, changing uses and different movement patterns added further complexity.
At the Life Sciences Innovation District, there was also a need to move beyond the legacy “Technopole” name and better reflect its growing role within the BioDundee ecosystem and its relationship with the University of Dundee. At Claverhouse Business Park, the existing signage did not reflect the scale or ambition of the location, and the challenge was to create a stronger and more legible identity across two sites separated by the A90.
Shaping movement and access
SCP Transport worked with Dundee City Council to understanding how people arrive at and move through each site, considering vehicle access, pedestrian routes and public transport connections. This work identified key decision points, arrival sequences and visibility challenges that informed where signage would be most effective.
Their input shaped a clear hierarchy of signs and routes, ensuring that wayfinding supports safe movement, works with the surrounding highway network and remains practical to deliver. This strategic layer underpins the clarity and functionality of the overall system.
Integrating placemaking and landscape
Stephenson Halliday focused on how signage sits within its wider physical setting and contributes to a stronger sense of arrival.
This included identifying opportunities to declutter existing environments, reinforce gateways and improve legibility through landscape structure, materials and planting. By treating signage and landscape together, the proposals strengthen key thresholds, improve first impressions and help define each site’s character while remaining flexible enough to evolve over time.
Creating a shared visual language
Copper worked with its RSK Group partners and Dundee City Council to design signage for the two districts.
For the Life Sciences Innovation District, this included establishing BioDundee Central as a clear and adaptable identity, aligned with existing BioDundee and University of Dundee guidance. The visual approach combines a restrained colour palette, clear typography and subtle graphic references that nod to scientific innovation and Dundee’s industrial heritage. At Claverhouse Business Park, the identity draws on Invest in Dundee branding, ensuring consistency with the city’s inward investment messaging while retaining a distinct character.
Across both sites, the signage shares common principles of scale, hierarchy and layout, allowing different locations to feel connected while responding to their individual contexts.
A coordinated wayfinding system
The resulting strategy brings together arrival signage, gateway markers, pedestrian and vehicle wayfinding and supporting road signage into a single, coherent family. Each element plays a defined role, helping people orient themselves, make decisions confidently and move through the sites with ease.
Importantly, the system has been designed to evolve. Information can be updated as occupiers change, and additional phases can be added without undermining the overall structure or visual coherence.
The outcome
The final strategy provides Dundee City Council with a clear and adaptable framework for improving navigation, identity and first impressions across two important employment locations.
Combining SCP’s movement expertise, Stephenson Halliday’s placemaking and landscape design, and Copper’s brand and communication-led approach, has delivered a joined-up solution that supports accessibility, legibility and long-term growth.
Together, the proposals will once implemented help position Dundee’s Life Science Innovation District and a key Business Park as connected, confident and welcoming places to work, invest and collaborate