Six hundred new student rooms coming in the Archimedes Quarter

SSH aims to accommodate at least 70 percent of the students to live in homes where they will share bathrooms and communal kitchens. Each house will accommodate 8 to 12 students, and the bedrooms will span 14 square metres. As earlier announced by SSH, the occupiers of those rooms will no longer be chosen through the practice of hospiteren, which is when the people already living in the house choose a roommate.

The remaining homes will be independent units where students will live alone. These studios will have their own entrance door, kitchen, bathroom and toilet. The building that now stands on Archimedeslaan 16 will be demolished to make way for a new neighbourhood called the Archimedes Quarter. The municipality of Utrecht and the property developer KondorWessels Projecten (KWP) have been planning to undertake the project since 2020. The construction works have been significantly delayed, but the agreement with SSH brings the realisation a step closer, or so it is hoped.

In addition to student housing, the Archimedes Quarter will also have space for first-time buyers. It is intended to be a lively neighbourhood, with a supermarket, a café, a lunchroom, a health centre, greenery and water features. KWP and the municipality intend to build 1,600 homes, 600 of which will be for students. According to SSH, this is an important step towards the realisation of a substantial number of new homes, in light of an ever-increasing housing shortage.

Archimedeslaan 16
Archimedeslaan 16 was built in the 1970s for secondary school teacher training programmes. Students were allowed to live there from 2010 onwards, but in 2019, they had to make way for the new construction project. Although there were plans to start the renovation in 2020, problems with permits due to nitrogen measures have prevented this from happening. Opposition to the decision to expand the A27/A12 Utrecht Ring Road, which requires clearing part of the Amelisweerd woods, also caused delays.

The building is now empty, and the site is being used for police, customs and commando exercises. The plan is to start building the new Archimedes Quarter in 2027. According to the municipality, some of the materials collected after the demolition of Archimedeslaan 16 will be reused. The student residences will be ready in 2030 at the earliest.