Kraaijvanger

On Wednesday, April 12th, alderman Tyas Bijlholt and student Ties Prins opened the Room for the City: the sustainable little brother of the new House for the City of Amersfoort. A group of students from ROC Midden Nederland designed and built this circular pavilion, so visitors will soon be able to find more information there about the newly built House for the City. A beautiful and instructive result of the collaboration between ROC Midden Nederland Kraaijvanger Architects and the Municipality of Amersfoort.

Social Return On Investment

It all started a year and a half ago. As frontrunner in sustainable architecture, Kraaijvanger Architects was to design the new city hall for Amersfoort: the House for the City. The Municipality of Amersfoort did attach a condition to the tender. Part of it had to be invested as Social Return On Investment in people with a distance to the labor market.

Life-like learning

One of the important goals of the collaboration formed was to give students a real assignment with which they could make a social contribution while learning. Theory is only instructive if you put it into practice. With real-life learning you really experience a profession,' says Karin Zijlstra, department manager of Bouw & Interieur College Amersfoort. Thus was born the idea of the Chamber for the City, for which the first educational event was kicked off on April 19, 2022. Now, a year later, the Chamber for the City is a reality.

It did not go entirely without a hitch, however. Architecture students Leroy de Jong, Ties Prins, Dani Stronks, Rick Brouwer and Bas Ringeling started the design process in September 2022 and in a short period of time realized the construction of the pavilion. The design in particular proved to be a complex matter.

'We had to do a lot of scraping on our first design. When you design with second-hand building materials, of course you don't know in advance which ones you're going to find. Getting everything dismantled was also another challenge," says student and team member Ties Prins.

Supervisors Charlotte Schiebroek, architecture lecturer at ROC Midden Nederland, and Ali Badai, hired for this project as project leader by Kraaijvanger, also saw the necessary challenges. From making feasible budgets to obtaining permits. From getting administration in order to simply communicating. Especially in a profession where you have to communicate with more and more different parties, it is good to experience in practice what you can come up against and to train your skills in this," Schiebroek says.

Building in the future

Alderman Tyas Bijlholt and Johnas Van Lammeren were part of the official opening of the Room for the City. A week earlier, Van Lammeren had been introduced to lecturing as a guest lecturer during the Week of Entrepreneurship. Practicing your profession sustainably is something he believes is not only desirable, but necessary:

Open for 6 Wednesdays

Local residents and interested parties will soon be able to visit the Room for the City for themselves. The pavilion will be open between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. for six Wednesdays from Wednesday, May 10, through Wednesday, June 14. Visitors can find the pavilion at Disketteweg 10 in Amersfoort and learn about sustainability, the Chamber for the City and the new yet-to-be-built House for the City. In the fall, the pavilion will move to the center, at the location where the House for the City will be built. For questions, contact teacher Charlotte Schiebroek, c.schiebroek@rocmn.nl.