CUBE (education building)

Many of the on-campus education buildings, such as the Warande and Dante Buildings, date back to the seventies and the late twentieth century. The lecture halls are mainly suited for lectures and are commonly qualified by students and staff as being outdated. With the number of students on the up, there is also a shortage of lecture halls in Tilburg. Since 2016, moreover, the prevailing educational profile has aimed to encourage more intensive and more direct student-teacher interaction and offer more scope to modular types of education.

All in all, then, outdated buildings, student increases and educational innovations gave rise to plans for a new education building. In the so-called 2014-2018 Real Estate Strategy, such a building was first mentioned by its working title Education and Self-Study Center and its Dutch abbreviation OZW. It replaces the temporary accommodation, pulled down in 2015, that housed the social sciences and provides a great number of U-shaped halls and 350 self-study workplaces. It also provides examination halls with the option of taking digital exams and a lecture hall with a 600-seat capacity that can be partitioned into two units. Its state-of-the-art technology includes double projection screens, video streaming facilities, sound amplification, cameras for live link-ups, etc.

Designed by Kees Kaan

After a selection procedure focusing on sustainability issues and the building’s architectural integration, it was designed by Kees Kaan, who used natural stone, a material also used in the Cobbenhagen Building and the Faculty Club. In its glass facade, there are references to patterns in the Goossens Building, and it features inner gardens, as in the Cobbenhagen and Tias Buildings. The education building will be completed in 2018 and had not been given a definite name yet in 2017.