News from the working group
Within the working group Educational & Learning spaces and Office spaces an extensive desk and field study has been executed to gain insight into the do’s and don’ts of new educational building.
The working group looked at volume, balance and architectural concepts for educational, learning and research spaces in combination with library services, lab spaces, office spaces and support services.
Visits were made to the Erasmus MC and de Erasmus University in Rotterdam and the Rijks Universiteit Groningen to look at new and very impressive features in the educational landscape, each built with very different approaches and concepts in mind.
The visits and desk research have provided the working group with many useful best (and worst) practices. In addition to these views on educational and learning spaces the working group has spoken to the main users of the new building, the students. The best practices and overall needs are formulated as ‘points of departure’ and are to be incorporated as boundary conditions for the (to be selected) architect designing the new ITC building.
The idea is to provide students with adequate, suitable, multi-functional space. Students should have access to study spaces for extensive and intensive (individual) study as well as project based learning and education spaces. The new building is to be designed with a clear zoning concept allowing different noise/sound levels for restaurant and recreation spaces versus offices, library and quiet study spaces.
This all done in view of the overall idea to offer the student a pleasant, inviting and sustainable ITC building (including green spaces). The new building should, like the current building, facilitate interaction between ITC staff and (ITC) students by offering a multi-purpose characteristic, inclusive meeting hub, representative of ITC’s mission and aim and its unique core of intercultural communication.
Option of Co-housing ITC and University College Twente (ATLAS) explored and rejected
In the past, the Faculty of ITC and the University College Twente ATLAS (UCT) have expressed their wishes to collaborate more substantively.
Their similarities in educational programmes and in forming an international community could be stimulated by sharing housing facilities and by co-housing.
Together with representatives of ITC and UCT, the Programme Team of the Long-Term Housing Strategy (LTSH) has explored the possibilities of housing ITC and UCT together in a new building on campus.
It turns out that the programme requirements of ITC and UCT cannot be integrated sufficiently to correspond to the framework of the LTSH, given the limited budget and square meters available.
The steering committee has decided not to elaborate the option of co-housing any further. The Faculty of ITC will continue with the housing project as planned.
