“These new buildings are in line with our ambition to bring together studying, working and living on a lively campus,” says vice president Nicole Ummelen, whose responsibilities as member of the Executive Board include accommodation. “We also find it very important to contribute to the realization of extra student accommodation this way, in view of the attractiveness of our university to newcomers both from the Netherlands and abroad.”

In addition, the Executive Board wants to make a “considerable” contribution to solving the problem of student housing in the city of Eindhoven. Last November already, council member Niels Groot (CDA) urged TU/e and Fontys to take responsibility for accommodation of their students. Both these institutions need to make locations available on their campuses for living units in the short term, Groot said.

Masterplan

TU/e has now decided to take action by building seven hundred extra units on campus. Incidentally, the municipal action plan Student Accommodation demonstrates that student housing shortage will only keep rising in the coming years, to almost four thousand units.

TU/e wants to develop two new residential towers with about three hundred living units each. Low-rise buildings in the form of a ‘student village’ consisting of some hundred residences will be placed between these two towers. As described in the ‘Masterplan TU/e campus 2040,’ which was dealt with during the University Council meeting in late March, this village is designed as a field of connected maisonettes sandwiched between the two residential towers. That field will have several, small-scale collective outdoor spaces that directly border on the Dommel valley, and is part of a green, garden-like surrounding. The residences have two floors, each with private kitchen and bathroom, and a roof terrace. The design is based on the Olympic village of the 1972 Munich games.