New University Library to cost 19 million euros more; completion in the first quarter of 2024
The cost of building the new University Library (UB) on the Binnengasthuis site has risen yet again: the new UB will cost 128 million euros, 19 million euros more than stated in the previous budget, which had already been revised upwards. Construction will also take nine months longer. According to the most recent schedule, the new University Library will be ready for use in early 2024.
This was announced by Jan Lintsen, the UvA board member responsible for the project. “These are significant setbacks,” he says. “Naturally, I would have preferred things to be different. In practice, it turns out that the centre of Amsterdam actually allows for only a limited degree of complexity.” In other words, the entire project is perhaps very complex from an architectural point of view: it involves the renovation and conversion of a nineteenth-century hospital in the heart of the city, surrounded by narrow canals and dilapidated quays.
The new, sustainable University Library must, of course, meet modern requirements. However, it has become apparent that the structural condition of the buildings is ‘even worse’ than anticipated at the start of the renovation; there is a shortage of labour in the construction sector; and material costs continue to rise. And so, inevitably, this leads to a new price tag, for a University Library that will look like this.
The new University Library is currently being built in what was, until 1981, the Second Surgical Clinic of the Binnengasthuis. It is set to become the pièce de résistance of the University Quarter, “the new heart of the UvA,” as the institution puts it. In addition to the University Library, the Faculty of Humanities will also eventually be located in this area. The faculty’s new dean, Marieke de Goede, has already taken up her post in the refurbished, oval-shaped Theo Bosch building, right next to the University Library under construction. Whether that building will remain standing or be demolished in due course, as the UvA wishes, is, incidentally, still to be decided.
160 million guilders
The construction of the new University Library is, in fact, a project that began back in the 1990s and was originally budgeted at 160 million guilders, around 72 million euros. The existing University Library was in danger of becoming too small, and the Humanities collection was scattered across half the city. The UvA set out to find a single location, with all manner of options being considered: merging, for example, with the newly built Amsterdam Public Library (OBA). A new building for the OBA was constructed on the IJ, but the UvA was not included in the plans: according to the UvA’s governing body at the time, it did not fit with the UvA’s strategy to build a University Library separate from and far away from the faculty sites. Four campuses were to be established at the UvA, and the University Library was to be located on one of those campuses. No campus was built on the IJ, so there was no central library there either.
Vijzelstraat
Around that time – by which point the new century had begun – the ABN Amro building on Vijzelstraat, known as ‘De Bazel’, also became available. Councillor Duco Stadig (PvdA) had, on behalf of the municipality, purchased the building for 62 million guilders and made an offer to UvA Executive Board Chair Sijbolt Noorda (PvdA) – the two were fellow members of a student fraternity: if the UvA wished to buy the building to house its central library, the municipality would grant a discount of 25 million on the purchase price. It was widely regarded as a generous offer, but the deal fell through. No campus was to be built on Vijzelstraat either, so why a university library there? Moreover, the UvA considered the distance to Vijzelstraat – a mere few hundred metres – to be far too great from the location it saw as its future centre of intellectual and administrative wisdom: the area in and around the former Binnengasthuis, the very place where the UvA had once, in 1632, been “born”.
Cruz y Ortiz
The uproar only really began when the UvA board conceived a plan to raze the monumental nineteenth-century hospital buildings to the ground and erect a brand-new University Library in their place. The prestigious Andalusian architectural firm Cruz y Ortiz had been commissioned to produce the design (see here for the design as it stood at the time). The building would never be built: the entire neighbourhood, many local and national heritage organisations, half the city council and many UvA staff members rallied against the demolition of the listed buildings. We were talking about National Monuments here! Had the UvA completely lost its mind?
The monuments should be restored, after which, as far as they were concerned, the University Library could easily move in. The UvA board took a very different view and was determined to press ahead with the new-build. A dispute lasting several years ensued. A trench war featuring dozens of information evenings, fierce letters, dozens of reports, visits to heritage professionals, local residents with guest rooms full of incriminating evidence against the UvA, not to mention various legal proceedings. This led the UvA, exactly ten years ago this month, to decide to backtrack. The university admitted its mistake and withdrew its application to demolish the listed buildings. Everyone was happy, except Cruz y Ortiz, who had drawn up the University Library design for nothing (but, unsurprisingly, sent the UvA a hefty bill for years of design work).
New designers were brought in, this time to design the University Library to fit the buildings where it will eventually be housed. And – if all goes well – it will open its doors in two years’ time. Not that everything suddenly went smoothly from 2012 onwards; quite the contrary. Of course, by then the entire University Library had already cost one and a half times as much as originally envisaged. Nor had an agreement yet been reached with the neighbourhood regarding the layout of the outdoor space or the location of a bicycle park. In 2015, there was also a Maagdenhuis occupation. The then University Board Chair, Louise Gunning, had drawn up a ten-point plan to accommodate the occupiers. One of these was ‘to resubmit the plans for the new University Library to the academic community’. In other words, it was possible to reopen discussions about the usefulness and necessity of a University Library on the Binnengasthuis site. Perhaps the University Library should move to the Oudemanhuispoort after all? This deliberative democracy led to a further two-year delay. But in September 2019, the ground-breaking ceremony for the restoration, extension and substructure of the listed buildings finally took place.
We are now two and a half years and a Covid-19 crisis further down the line. The restoration has progressed steadily over the past few years. New foundations were laid and the bicycle basement was completed: 1,200 square metres for a thousand bicycles, including changing rooms and showers. After all, anyone cycling in through the pouring rain or an icy winter wind should be able to have a nice shower and get changed. In a few weeks’ time, work will begin on delivering 600 tonnes of steel to erect the glass canopy that will be installed above the building’s former courtyard garden. Any more facts?
There will be 300,000 books on open-shelf display – incidentally, far fewer than in the current University Library (currently 19 kilometres’ worth of books at Singel; soon to be 7 kilometres’ worth on the BG site). Many books will be moved to the storage facility in Zuidoost (the IWO), whilst a smaller proportion will be destroyed. There will also be 23 (teaching) rooms with a thousand study places, a number that can be scaled up to 1,600 in emergencies. In addition, the adjoining former nuns’ house will provide a further eighty to one hundred workspaces for staff.
Construction budget
Meanwhile, virtually nothing remains of the original budget: the figures on the table kept rising. In 2018, the UvA was still working on the basis of 66 million euros; by the 2020 budget, this had risen to 85 million euros, and in January 2021, the cost was expected to reach 108.8 million euros. We have now reached 128 million, and who knows – it may well become even more expensive. A war in Europe certainly isn’t helping matters. In a press statement, the UvA emphasises that the cost overruns will have “no consequences” for teaching and research: the additional costs can be absorbed ‘within the UvA’s overall accommodation plan’. Nevertheless, the construction fund is almost depleted.
“In the current estimates, we may still face a minor setback, but not much more,” said Lintsen yesterday during a tour of the building site. Nevertheless, he is pleased that the UvA ultimately opted for the restoration of the listed buildings in 2012. “Despite everything, I am still glad that we did not go ahead with the modern design (by Cruz y Ortiz) and opted for restoration instead.” In two years’ time, we will see whether the University Library new-build project can finally be closed.
