Student Experience | Amstelveen

The 502-room student housing complex Student Experience Amstelveen rethinks collective living within campus Uilenstede. The building combines a communal spatial concept with a rational modular construction and a carefully articulated material palette.

Collective living

This Student Experience – OZ has already designed several – is organized as a continuous volume around a central courtyard. The mass steps down towards the courtyard, and up again, almost like in an Escher drawing. The shape brings daylight deep into the collective space while creating a series of accessible roof terraces. The connected rooftop route links the student rooms with rooftop facilities like a sports cage and viewing points. At the centre, shared facilities – including a restaurant and study spaces – form the social heart of the building.

Rhythm in architecture

A modular construction system underpins the building’s architectural logic. Prefabricated, self-supporting units form the basis of the student rooms, allowing the structure to be efficiently stacked while maintaining a lightweight character. Rather than concealing this repetition, the architecture uses it as an organizing principle: the rhythm of the modules, windows and terraces gives the façades a clear and consistent scale.

A restrained material palette

The façades are articulated in a restrained palette of anodized aluminium panels and aluminium window frames with a etched matt zinc-grey appearance. This neutral skin gives the stepped volume a coherent and robust character, while the entrance volume introduces a contrasting copper-coloured aluminium finish to walls, ceilings and structural elements. Stainless-steel cable elements and powder-coated steel stairs add detail to the collective spaces, balancing the industrial logic of the modular construction with a warmer architectural expression.

Construction of the project started summer 2026, marking the next step in bringing the long-awaited design to life.