Organisation

Mainly small rooms in new teaching building

The new teaching building due to be erected on campus opposite Rikilt will mainly house small classrooms and rooms for practicals, says Peter Booman, director of Facilities & Services at WUR.
Albert Sikkema

An artist’s impression of the planned new teaching building opposite Rikilt. Illustration LIAG architecten en bouwadviseurs

The building, which is scheduled to come into use in September 2021, will also house a restaurant and one large lecture hall for 225 students. ‘The other rooms are intended for 60 students and can be combined,’ says Booman. ‘There will also be lots of space for practicals in the building; that’s the biggest bottleneck.’

The new teaching building will not have any computer rooms but will have a lot of power sockets as students usually bring their own laptops to lectures these days, says Booman. The building will also have two innovative teaching rooms. ‘They will be delivered as a kind of shell so that we adapt them to suit new teaching methods later.’

The addition of this new building should let WUR teach around 15,500 students by 2021; it currently has over 12,000 students. Booman doesn’t know yet whether student numbers will stop growing after that. ‘That is why the design allows for a second and third phase so that we can take action immediately as soon as we have more information.’ Architecture firm LIAG has therefore been commissioned to produce a design for three phases. Phase 1 will result in an independent, complete teaching building with a floor area of 7500 square metres in September 2021. Phases 2 and 3 will expand the space in such a way that the building work does not disrupt teaching activities.

The new building will replace Triton, which now houses StartHub. StartHub will move temporarily to in Atlas.

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