RUG Campus Fryslân
The State University of Groningen was looking for a location in the city center of Leeuwarden for Campus Fryslân, its new 12th faculty. Finally, the former stock exchange, a state monument dating from 1880 designed by architect Romein, was selected.
The design is focused on the character of the stock exchange. The ground floor used to be a warehouse with a sober and efficient finishing for the agricultural products that have to be sold. On the exhibition floor above it, which has a fine-mesh cast iron structure of columns and girders, the trade was conducted in a high, light, richly decorated hall.
The ground floor turned out to be naturally suitable for concentrated working in a quieter environment. The existing structure of the monument has been used for an appropriate, functional and spatially interesting layout.
On the floor itself it is busier around the central hall which leads via the reconstructed monumental staircase directly to the street via the draft portal. The former stock exchange is now filled with contrasting new volumes. The new layout is kept separate from the original building so that the monument remains intact and therefore 100% preserved.
Campus Fryslân is the first monumental ‘all electric’ educational building in the Netherlands. The flat part of the roof is invisibly covered with PV panels.
Photos: Thijs Wolzak