Amsterdam, The Netherlands – In light of ever-increasing student numbers and the demand for larger teaching rooms, the new inter-faculty building for TU Delft is designed to meet the leading Dutch university’s need for versatile extra teaching space.

For Echo, UNStudio, in collaboration with Arup and BBN, has created a design that fully supports  educational typologies with an energy-generating building in which adaptability and the wellbeing of the user are central.

Ben van Berkel: “The future campus needs to be programmed with a series of agile spaces that invite students and faculty to learn, collaborate and co-create. As student numbers continue to grow, educational buildings need to be extremely flexible: they not only need to operate for shared, interfaculty use, but also need to house a large variety of flexible spaces that cater for various ways of teaching and studying and varying class sizes.”

Currently under construction and due for completion in Dec 2021, Echo will house a total of seven teaching rooms, most with a flexible layout. The largest lecture room, which can accommodate 700 people, can be divided into three separate rooms. The more than 300 study spaces can be used for group work and self-study.

Echo is an education building with multifunctional spaces that transcends current learning environments. The design supports the contemporary culture of 'Everything Anywhere', where the in-between space is also of great importance. Echo, in addition to excellent study spaces, therefore provides space for unstructured time: a variety of platforms for reflection, inspiration and communication.