The Education Center is the heart of Rotterdam’s renewed academic hospital Erasmus MC, designed in the 1960s by Arie Hagoort (OD205) in collaboration with Jean Prouvé. The new design repurposes a courtyard and an existing low-rise building with daylight-deprived rooms, a problematic orientation, and no clear routing.
Following the essence of the original design, the second floor has been reintroduced as the main floor and entrance of the complex. The education center is designed as a library landscape where students from all medical disciplines come together. The main space is the education square with a 35-meter long and four-storey-high bookcase wall and a pattern of study islands.
It is spanned by a large, column-free glazed roof structure that continues the diagonal construction lines of the existing building. The square is lined by the library, new seminar rooms, refurbished lecture rooms, and a thesis defence room. A gallery and a large footbridge provide access to the rooms on the third floor.
