Renovation Student Housing Calslaan

The brief was to change the organisation of the buildings. Gropus of eighteen studentrooms were to be reorganised ............

Part of a complex of student flats built in the 1960s on the campus of the Twente University of Technology has undergone a radical renovation. In the original setup, twenty students were housed in each block which had a communal kitchen on the ground floor. In the converted buildings each floor contains five or six student rooms plus a common room with adjoining kitchen. In the centre of each block is a spiral staircase. The front and rear elevations were moved outwards so that the students' rooms are somewhat larger than before, although they remain tiny. In stark contrast to the niggardly proportions of the living space, is the generous impression made by the complex as a whole. Structuralist illegibility has made way for a crystalclear outward form. The deepset vertical windows give the whitestuccoed architecture a stately air. The marble cladding of the entrance and the heavy toughenedglass entrance doors lend the very basic life of a student an uncustomary distinction. Whereas the original linked cubes gave the impression of being part of an endlessly repeatable structure, the renovated blocks convey a sense of autonomy.