Student Acommodation, Utrecht

Year:	2013 -2014
Location:	Utrecht
Architect:	Onix
Designer:	Onix
Client:	SSH Utrecht
Contractor:	Waal
Project type:	architecture
Product:	stone strips glazed in shades of white and blue

Haiko Meijer, architect at Onix, came to Koninklijke Tichelaar with the request for a cladding material that would best convey the notion of a ‘cloud’, the conceptual starting point for the project, and asked whether this glazed material, which we would supply, was suited to prefab concrete elements. After consulting our supplier of unglazed material in Germany, it turned out that for the American market they actually supply nothing but strips for prefab building. Having discussed several directions of development and assessed test panels, we opted for a fairly unstable glaze which in itself yields a rich spectrum of shades. This building project is an interesting one for our company, also because this time we were not serving the top end of the market. The architect of this housing project for students, which is generally seen as being at the ‘bottom end’ of the market, had dealt very cleverly with the programme of requirements, and the large scale of the building (650 students) showed that we were capable of supplying an exceptional cladding within the agreed budget.