Jakoba Mulder House: Educational theater of the future

New education building as final piece of Amstel campus

The Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA) has inaugurated its future-proof and most sustainable educational building. The Jakoba Mulder House on Rhijnspoorplein is the final piece of the Amstel Campus, located on Wibautstraat. The building houses some 6,000 to 7,000 students of the Faculty of Technology.

Urban planning incorporation Amstel Campus

The Jakoba Mulder House is in a prominent location, on the corner of Wibautstraat and Mauritskade, on the edge of the historic city center and on the Singelgracht. Together with the monumental Benno Premsela House on the opposite side of Wibautstraat, the building forms a gateway to the city. Together with a tall building element on the opposite side, a monumentality is created that connects the architectural elements in the area. The building volume consists of a slender tower (54 meters, 13 layers) and a low building block (33 meters, 6 layers) on Mauritskade. In urban planning terms, the location of the tower can be called a "piece of art. A widening of Wibautstraat creates a convincing urban entrance.

Flexible makes future-proof

Former HvA architecture students Marc Koehler (Marc Koehler Architects) and Nanne de Ru (Powerhouse Company) collaborated on the design of the Jakoba Mulder House and involved the Architekten Cie. in the design team in 2014. The result is a sustainable, flexible educational building with an open character. The precast facade was assembled scaffold-free and finished according to passive building principles with recycled aluminum window frames and natural stone. The color of the Jura natural stone is the same as the adjacent Theo Thijssen House, creating harmony with the surroundings and reinforcing the monumental, future-proof character. Due to the open structure, every floor in the building is flexible in its layout. Each facade is varied in open and closed sections, tailored to the orientation, the view and the sun load.

Atrium as a connector

An imposing atrium connects the Jakoba Mulder House to the adjacent Theo Thijssen House, which remained in use during the construction phase. All floors open onto the atrium and have open terraces where students can work on their projects. The atrium creates an open character with plenty of natural daylight. The architects intend this to create a new public domain as a theatrical space for large events and exhibitions on the first floor and as stacked stages where students from different fields of knowledge meet. 

Default durable

The vision of a sustainable building is based on reuse, minimizing consumption, use of renewable energy and sustainable construction. The flexible structure also makes the Jakoba Mulder House future-proof in the longer term. The building can transform to other functions relatively easily because the high-rise and low-rise buildings can function separately. The design achieved a BREEAM 'Excellent' score of 76.22% in 2014, the second highest certification for sustainable design. The building now has an energy label of A++. 

Paperless design

The Jakoba Mulder House is one of the first projects in the Netherlands to be tendered on the basis of Building Information Modeling (BIM). The specifications were provided digitally in their entirety and the digital model was the basis of the contract. A strong example of "paperless design. In light of the long design process, BIM gave the flexibility to make changes relatively quickly and for everyone to see. All underlying information went along with forming the design. This saved time and money and improved the quality of execution.