Friday 2 April 2021

New architecture for Leiden

 New architecture for Leiden 

Today, Good Friday, the main item on the news page of the regional broadcaster is a controversial plan for the redevelopment of an old part of the University in Leiden: Omstreden plan ter inzage: waarom wil Universiteit Leiden uitbreiden in binnenstad? - Omroep West. The controversy apparently concerns the demolition of a number of social housing units, so as to make space for a new humanities campus. The steady decline of social housing in the Netherlands is indeed a sign of our times, although it doesn't receive enough attention next to worries about the housing shortage and dangerous investors in the housing market. However, what caught my attention were the artist's impressions of the new buildings (Beelden - Humanities Campus - Projecten - KCAP). 

The design is by an established architectural firm and the images depict a morphology one should expect from them: flat façades dominated by glass and a paper-thin roof on top. For over a decade, the same architecture has been facing me from across the street at my office: the student housing complex at the corner of Michiel de Ruyterweg and Julianalaan, Delft (2 Michiel de Ruyterweg - Google Maps). With less glass on the façade but no sun shading, just like the Leiden design, this complex is also oriented to the south and the west. Whenever the sun shines, the student studios are notorious for becoming unbearably hot. 

Is there any reason to assume that the Leiden University complex will fare better? It is possible that it will use very advanced materials or that it will have heavy-duty services that could alleviate the thermal gains from the unfortunately oriented glass but such measures significantly raise construction and operation costs. This is obviously not desirable, although we seem to care less and less about such matters. Dutch buildings were already  overly and often unnecessarily reliant on mechanical ventilation; following the heatwaves of early years, air conditioning is presented as an unescapable necessity but there is significantly less interest in passive measures such as sun shading, clever orientation or natural ventilation. Moreover, when it comes to university buildings and student housing, thermal performance appears not to be a priority: in addition to the Delft housing complex mentioned above, there is another abominal case in Leiden (Bloedhete studentenflats in Leiden: 'Het kan wel 40 graden worden' | NOS) and probably many more elsewhere. 

Still, in the environmentally-conscious twenty-first century, with so much talk about sustainable, low-energy buildings, not trying to include passive solutions in a major public building is surely a lost opportunity. We need exemplary designs that demonstrate the possibilities of cleverer architecture. Adding a bit of green to the flat roofs of the new humanities campus in Leiden, as the artist's impressions suggest, is far from enough. 

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