UvA: incorporate public values into your property strategy!
In his speech during the Dies Natalis, Peter Paul Verbeek advocated academic citizenship as a means of narrowing the gap between science and society. But if you look at how the UvA organises its campuses, what you see is mainly a distant and closed institution, argues Bor van Zeeland.
Covid has shown us the importance of physical gatherings within the academic community. Without meetings in physical space, it cannot exist. Without a campus, a degree programme feels like an online course. The importance attached to occupations also proves that sharing or appropriating space is a core element of the academic experience; the literal appropriation of university spaces or buildings by concerned academics and students is the highest means on the escalation ladder for protest groups.
The UvA seems to have no sense of the importance of space, which is a shame, because it makes the institution feel closed to outsiders and prevents the formation of an academic community.
Relocation of the University Library
A painful example of this is the relocation of the University Library. The original assignment that the UvA drew up in 2013 for the new University Library is directly in line with the idea of academic citizenship: “…create a library like a square, where the university is in contact with society”. Little has come of that vision: it is difficult to have contact with that society if you need a UvA pass to even enter the building.
Not to mention what the UvA is leaving behind: the UB-Singel and the library of the P.C. Hoofthuis. The UB building complex on the Singel is perhaps the oldest public building complex in Amsterdam. This complex has had a public function since the early sixteenth century. First for the militia, later for the Athenaeum Illustre and the UvA. I hereby call on city historians to find a building in the city that has had a public function for longer than the old University Library.
Without embarrassment or regard for the rich, monumental, public role of this building, the UvA is selling it to the highest bidder, who will probably turn it into an anonymous office complex. The fact that the UvA is behaving like a profit-hungry property developer does little to help its attempts to come across as a socially engaged organisation.
Slow death
The PC-Hoofthuis has been assigned a slower death. Year after year, its facilities are disappearing: the gym, the education desk and the library. Anyone walking around there now is mainly confronted with painful vacancy, while elsewhere students are still desperately looking for a place to study. This building is also on the UvA’s list of properties for sale. Local residents have been calling for years for the building's public function to be taken into account in the sale, but the university has paid little attention to this. How can you connect with a community if, as an institution, you don’t listen to it?
Meaningless slogans
Fortunately, things are different at the Roeterseiland diploma factory. I have to admit that there are no access gates, no deterioration and no sales. However, the lack of inspiration drips from the walls here. The epicentre of this is in REC-A. Have you ever counted the number of grey walls there? Although REC is where most of the students and academic staff are located, nowhere in the building can you see what all these people are doing and what projects they are working on. Let alone find anything about the 394-year history of the UvA. The only thing adorning the walls are meaningless slogans such as “Navigating a complex world”.
Grey wall
How can we convey the importance of the UvA to society if the university cannot even explain this to its own community? Fortunately, every grey wall and empty space is an opportunity: give students, lecturers and cleaners the space to show why and for what purpose they come to campus every day and what they do there. Give Crea, Spui25, Vox, the Allard Pierson – institutions that are our points of contact with society – the space to promote their programmes in a place that is more dignified than a notice board in a dark corner.
Let the walls be our muses. Use the empty classrooms and buildings to provide a place for initiatives that no longer have a place in the city. Include public values in your real estate strategy. UvA, take good care of your community and environment. That is how you will regain trust.
Bor van Zeeland is a Master’s student in Urban Planning at the UvA and a housing policy officer at the National Student Union (LSVb).
