Horst complex, University of Twente

The Horst complex was designed for the Engineering faculty on the campus of what was then known as the Technical College of Twente. The design by architecten van Mourik dates from 1964. The original idea was based on a tower with double height drawing rooms, around which four halls for one-to-one test situations were situated. The test halls are connected to each other by a ring of cabinets, resulting in a spacious indoor courtyard. The Horst complex is situated in the surrounding country estate like a ‘machine in the landscape’ and enjoys an open relationship with its environs. With the arrival of computers in education and research, the drawing rooms in the tower and the test facilities in the hall have lost their significance. The clear design of the Horst complex and its relationship with the surrounding area are still of great value however, which is why the current day user, the University of Twente, has decided to re-use the existing buildings. The entire Horst complex has therefore been renovated, adapted and extended by architecten van Mourik in the period from 1998 to 2008. New functions have been found for the various areas, in keeping with the needs of modern education. The drawing rooms are being re-used as project rooms for teaching purposes, while numerous new functions are now housed in the test halls. Two of the halls, the Noordhorst and Oosthorst, now have teaching functions, for example. A third hall, the Westhorst, houses technical workshops, a wind tunnel, robotic spraying cabins and a virtual laboratory. The fourth hall, the Zuidhorst, contains a laboratory with biochemical laboratories and associated offices. The complex has been drastically adapted to modern day insights into constructional physics, installations and sustainability. The look of the building has also undergone a metamorphosis. The former test halls in particular have changed shape completely. Parts of the facades are fully transparent, partially letting light in and partially closed, playing with various degrees of openness; and so the complex enjoys an ever varying relationship with its surroundings. The interior has also been completely changed. In choosing the materials, a visual distinction was sought between the various types of new rooms, whose looks reflect their functions. The complex has not only been renovated and adapted but also extended with a new construction. Part of this assignment was to retain the monumental oak trees on the site where possible. The new building ‘winds’ its way around the tree groups as it were, resulting in a comb shaped floor plan. Like the former Zuidhorst test hall, this building, the Meander, houses state-of-the-art laboratories with associated offices. architecten van Mourik designed a basic module for the laboratories of the Horst complex, from which a variety of laboratory areas can be composed. The associated offices are grouped around the laboratory modules. This concept has been applied in both the Meander and the Zuidhorst, though varying solutions were sought for the office locations, due to the different floor plans of the two buildings. In the Zuidhorst, the offices are situated around two atria with olive groves, while the offices in the Meander are along the edge of the building.