New Student Housing at the University of Twente

The high rise at the Campagneplein location lies in the middle of the Residential and Social Centre on the Boulevard facilities street.
The building is nine stories high on the sport fields’ side. On the Boulevard side, the building fits the small-scale character of this pedestrian street with two building layers. The supermarket and the hairdresser are on this side. On the first floor, the dwellings are situated round a communal roof terrace. The façade facing the sport centre is fitted out as a climbing wall.
The climbing wall with 2500 grips is the second highest in the Netherlands and forms the eyecatcher of the otherwise rather straight-forward building. It was a gift from the client to the inhabitants of the campus, because the university of Enschede has a very active and successful mountaineering club – however paradoxical that may sound in the flat Netherlands. As a climber in the Netherlands, one anyway has to resort to artificially created training spots, so why not combine architecture and climbing wall?