Contract - March 2015 - 45

PHOTOGRAPHY: RENÉ DE WIT (OPPOSITE, TOP LEFT); CHRISTIAN VAN DER KOOY (OTHER THREE)

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Section Drawing

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Ground Floor Plan
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Entrance
Foyer
Cafe
Kitchen
Study area
Meeting room
Theater

otterdam's Erasmus University is a campus
of many slab towers and concrete classroom
buildings. A glass box, though, presents a
smiling face in aluminum louvers. The new
Erasmus Pavilion-primarily a cafe, study space, and
auditorium-is a central gathering place that the
sprawling campus of 14,000 students had never had.
Erasmus University had been primarily the kind of
place where people "would study and immediately leave.
There was no public place nor nice area to be in," said
Stefan Prins, the project leader for architecture and
design firm Powerhouse Company, which collaborated
with design agency De Zwarte Hond. Both firms are
based in Rotterdam.
Erasmus Pavilion plays a more prominent role
on the campus than its relatively diminutive 20,000square-foot size would suggest. Located at the key
intersection of a new landscaped path and broad plaza
built from a master plan by Juurlink + Geluk and Studio
Sputnik, it draws people out of their isolated departments
and fosters greater interaction. The pavilion's unusual
program pursues the same goal, with an extroverted
cafe and study space wrapping a black-box auditorium
flexible enough to accommodate classes, events, parties,
films, and performances. "The ambition was to create
a really vibrant place where everybody can meet
everybody," Prins says.
A curved set of stairs extends from an outdoor
plaza into the pavilion to a studio-theater foyer along
the full width of the building's south elevation. The cafe,
which runs the full width of both the west- and northfacing sides, captures afternoon sun and opens to a
terrace. A study area faces east, at a level between
the foyer and cafe.
These transparent spaces are light filled with
full-height glass, but direct sunlight is mitigated by an
array of louvers set outside the glass in a draped curve
that can be adjusted to control glare and heat gain. The
shape of the louver armature was calculated according
to the sun's path, and louvers cover more of the glass on
the east and west elevations that are exposed to the
most severe thermal loads.
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An adaptive facade system
Powerhouse Company designed Erasmus Pavilion
around the concept of creating a building that can
actively change its facade not only to adapt to the
weather and seasons, but also to allow an adjustable
level of intimacy inside depending on the events. The

louvers' curving theme reappears in the half-vault,
oak-slat ceilings in the spaces along the glazed perimeter.
Though the radius of the vaults is equal all around, the
spatial effect varies because of the differing floor heights.
The foyer embraces patrons passing into the theater,
and study spaces feel intimate and more akin to a library
because the vaults extend to the floor or just above it.
The vault over the double-height space of the cafe's
dining areas is in contrast to a low, flat ceiling for the
bar and servery.
Oak tables in the cafe match the ceiling, while
black-painted wood surfaces and the use of red for
upholstery and signage evoke coffeehouse conviviality.
A small stage perches in the corner, encouraging informal
music and talk. In contrast to the daylit spaces that line
the glass walls, the aesthetic of the windowless, 200-seat
theater space is saturated blue. The raked seats for
lectures or film viewing can be retracted for flat-floor
events, and an exposed lighting grid overhead flexibly
accommodates various live-performance styles.
A range of sustainable features
Triple-pane glass and the louvers are just two elements
of the ambitious energy-efficient design of the building,
which has received the Netherlands' highest Energy
Performance Certificate grade, 0.2, or A++. The
building-management system can optimize the blade
angle for the best mix of glare and heat-gain control,
though the settings can be manually overridden. Only
the auditorium is fully heated and cooled by mechanical
means, which incorporate a geothermal heat pump. Cafe
operators can throw open the terrace doors on mild days,
and that aids a natural ventilation strategy combining
operable windows in the curtain wall with roof hatches
that draw out warm exhaust air.
Electric lights are rarely needed in the daytime
in spaces on the periphery. LED fixtures mounted at the
top of the curtain wall light the spaces, while LED uplights
bathe the wood vaults. Light bounced from a red surface
behind the slats adds a warm glow. Electricity from
roof-mounted solar panels further reduces demand
from the grid.
Welcoming spaces and a cafe atmosphere have
made Erasmus Pavilion a go-to hub for many on campus.
"We've found that international students, especially,
feel at home in the pavilion," said Ruben Cieremans,
the pavilion's managing director. "Good food creates
interesting contact between students, teachers,
and companies." c
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Contract - March 2015

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