OFFICE 54

A competition for housing on Ghent University’s Kantienberg campus entailed a complex brief for 600 student rooms, 100 flats for the elderly, a student restaurant and parking infrastructure. The required programme was distributed over a set of three buildings with inner courtyards, each one conforming to the irregularities of the existing sites. The rectangular volume indented at the corner accommodates student housing, organised as an array of units around central corridors with occasional larger communal spaces. This sequence is interrupted on the ground floor, where large gates mark the entrances to the different living quarters and allow views from the street to the inner garden. In contrast to the overall facade, which is clad in natural stone, the thoroughfares are finished in plain concrete. Inside the courtyard, trees grow through openings in a steel-grated floor that provides natural light for the bicycle parking below ground.