Faculty club

Up until the 21st century, the University lacked suitable representative function rooms where guests could be welcomed and lunches and dinners could be served. Occasionally, the Portraits Room was transformed for wining and dining purposes, but restaurant Auberge, only a short walk away from campus, was the usual venue of choice.

In 2011, the Faculty Club was completed on the very spot where there had long been a bungalow, the home of the head of Mail and Security at the time. The plot is on the verge of the Warande Wood, and the wood does figure very prominently indeed in the design by Harm Timmermans (Shift Architecture and Urbanism, Rotterdam): it can be seen from all corners of the building, and the glass facade at the back even opens up panoramic vistas of the wood.

Building permission for the Faculty Club was not granted without causing a bit of a brouhaha. The Warande Wood is a protected area, and no fewer than fifteen organizations objected to the plan. When they were shown the Shift design, though, with its sedum-covered roofs and green garden, the old bungalow was no comparison, and opposition died down.

References

The building refers to the Cobbenhagen Building by Jos Bedaux in several respects. In both buildings, for example, the four facades are entirely different, and glass walls have been used to fuse the inside and outside worlds. The material used on the outside (shellbearing limestone) is also the same, though the Faculty Club’s masonry has a more modern layout mode. Inside, however, the Faculty Club is all business and straight lines and lacks the monastic atmosphere that characterizes the Cobbenhagen Building. Its receding dark plinth causes the building to appear to be hovering above the ground. The building received the National Steel Award and won the prestigious Red Dot Design Award.

The Faculty Club has two meeting rooms for up to 30 people, a dining area and a lounge with an open fire. The building is often used to host receptions (up to 180 people), drinks and buffets, and to receive foreign or even royal delegations.