Ground-breaking Science Park

Amsterdam University College (AUC) is situated directly next to the railway station in the Science Park, a campus in Watergraafsmeer for education, research and enterprise. The freestanding building grabs the eye with its Corten-steel elevations and the two peaked roofs that terminate each side. This complex is for some seven hundred students on the AUC bachelor’s degree course, which was set up by the UvA and the VU, Amsterdam’s two universities, in order to provide small-scale teaching for top-class students. Half of the students are from abroad, which justifies the client’s request that the building should be designed as a ‘home’.

Accordingly, inside the building is an open core in which stairs lead past various study spaces and sitting areas. Underneath the double-pitched roof is a study space that can be described as almost cosy. Because there are no large lectures at AUC there is no auditorium. Occasional large gatherings are held in the communal space on the ground floor where a wide staircase with double height treads functions as tiered seating. The teaching spaces are numerous but compact. In line with the institute’s community character, the staff rooms are situated next to the communal spaces and are entirely of glass. The complete transparency and the many study areas that cannot be screened from noise elsewhere in the building, does not, surprisingly enough, appear to affect the students’ and staff’s ability to concentrate.

The building’s compact volume derives from the ambitions of the client and the architect with regard to sustainability. With heat and cold storage and concrete core activation, energy loss and use is kept to a minimum. Roof insulation is in the form of a sedum covering and the series of peaked roofs facilitates rainwater collection. (ARCAM/ MB)