The board of the foundation consists of five students, three of whom study BE at TU/e. The other two are Real Estate students at Fontys. “It’s an advantage that we’re already familiar with how the market works and with the ins and outs of these kinds of redevelopments. It goes without saying we all have an interest in this field, otherwise we wouldn’t study it,” Butter says.

According to her, there are also many advantages to approaching this issue as a student initiative. “We’re a non-profit organization are in to achieve a societal goal, not to make a profit. We find that there’s a lot of goodwill because of this and it’s often easy to get an appointment with the municipality or property owners.”

Modular transformation

The foundation is in talks with a healthcare institution, for example. “It has some 95,000 gross lettable floor area in the Netherlands, which is not currently in use. Something like that would be very suitable to transform into temporary student housing,” Butter says.

As Eindje Bouwen doesn’t end up owning the building but rents it for temporary use, such a transformation must be modular. “In other words, we’ll transform a building so that students can live in it and once our lease ends, after a few years, we also have to be able to easily reverse the modifications. That way, the owner – for example, a healthcare institution – can reoccupy the building without having to overhaul it,” Van Rijn explains. “The modular aspect makes such a transformation a lot more complex, but also more sustainable.”

When the team looks for buildings, there are many things to consider. Commercial properties are generally laid out differently than properties intended for housing. “The biggest challenge is that in many commercial properties the windows can’t open and they don’t have enough water connections. Those are very important in a home, for plumbing, for example, but also in the kitchen or for a washing machine,” explains board member and BE student Lola van Kessel.

And the layout of the building also proves to be an important issue in other ways, Van Rijn says. “If you find an office building that consists of one big open-plan space, it’s very difficult to transform it into housing, for one thing because there are too few places where you can attach new partition walls.”

Networking

The five-headed team doesn’t have a transformation project underway yet. “What I’ve noticed about the world of construction is that you have to do a lot of networking. Much more than I expected based on my studies. You can have a beautiful concept and a lot of knowledge to back it up, but if you don’t have a network it won’t work out,” says Van Rijn. So this is exactly what they’ve been very busy with over the past few months, he adds.

With the network slowly but surely getting to where it needs to be, he and his fellow board members say things are starting to come together. “Nothing has been finalized yet, but we are in talks with a party whose building could potentially become our first transformation project,” Butter says. “It would be great if we could start this before we hand over to a new board in September, but I don’t know if that’s realistic. After all, once you have commitment for a building, you still have to put together the transformation plan and find an investor.”

After a few months of groundwork, it’s time to officially launch Eindje Bouwen. Today, the team is getting together to celebrate the progress. “We have invited students, teachers, the municipality, housing corporations, SHS Delft, and basically everyone involved in any way,” Van Rijn says. “I had sent a sign-up link to acquaintances, but I think it was forwarded because I saw all kinds of unfamiliar names in the attendance list. Which is great, as it gives us more networking opportunities.”