- The University
- 08/02/2018
From campus to campus for hikers
A ten-kilometer-long route from the High Tech Campus (HTC) to the TU/e campus will be included in a hikers’ guide in which chapters will be devoted to the twelve other university cities as well. At the end of May publisher Gegarandeerd Onregelmatig is going to present the book, with the provisional working title ‘Campuslopen’ (Campus Hikes). Yesterday the final editing was carried out in the field. “Is this a lazy stair?” Cursor joined the hiker-cum-editors.
“Within this theme of hikes within university cities in the Netherlands, we mostly walk from old to new”, says publisher Lourens Vellinga. “In a city like Eindhoven, though, where there is no academy building to be found, this approach needs to be adapted. We are starting the hike at the High Tech Campus and continue our walk along the river Dommel to the north until we finish on the TU/e campus.”
What surprises him as well as the five other editors joining him, is that they see so few students on the HTC. “I would have expected to taste an educational atmosphere here, but I only see businesses. If there were only banks and insurance companies located on this site, it would look the same. And still the name makes us suspect something else.”
If we want to see students we have to walk on for quite some distance. Via the course of the river Dommel, along the Genneper watermill, the Van Abbe Museum, the former Eindhoven Students’ Chapel and the Effenaar we finally cover the underpass through the Silly walk tunnel to arrive on the campus. First it is time for coffee in the Zwarte Doos.
Lively
This is one of the last hikes to be checked before the book will be printed. Is every reference correct, have all the loose ends been tied up? Vellinga has meanwhile found out that a walk across a university of technology site is quite an experience. “You can go inside everywhere and there’s always something worth looking at. Especially on a weekday.”
Fellow hiker Anja Smeets from Weert thinks so too. On one earlier occasion she was on the TU/e site, during GLOW, but it is only now that she realizes that the buildings are open to the public. “It’s very pleasant to find that you can go in everywhere.”
The route directs the hikers through the Auditorium with a pointer to the organ. Via artwork ‘Transformation’ (a stainless steel column featuring letters saying Where innovation starts) we pass by the Student Sports Center ‘of which it can hardly be detected that the core was designed by Gerrit Rietveld in 1963’. We glance at the new student flats Aurora and Luna. Some attention is devoted to the Nanolab in the Spectrum building and after arriving on the Groene Loper we proceed via Gemini to explore the walkway system.
Elly Euverman from Tiel finds this a very appealing element. “I’m surprised to see that all the buildings are interconnected.” It is the architecture of the buildings that appeals most to hiker Cor Smeets. Encouraged by the beautifully clear blue sky, he makes lots of photos of the architecture.
Do they need to adjust many details in the description of the route? In fact it is just minor things; a street name or a numeral is added. Someone thinks that the crossing near the Students’ Chapel is not safe, but Vellinga wants to keep the descriptions concise and certainly would not want them to sound patronizing. “The users of the guide are adults who cross roads more often.”
On May 25 the chairman of the VSNU, Pieter Duisenberg, will in a restricted circle receive the first copy, featuring a preface by himself. By then the title may have been changed as well. And the concept of ‘lazy (i.e. comfortable) stair’. For opinions on that name of the stair leading up to the entrance to Vertigo are still divided.
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