The Education Center is part of the Rotterdam academic hospital Erasmus MC, originally designed in 1965 by Arie Hagoort (OD205) in collaboration with Jean Prouvé, and recently extended by EGM architecten. Since its completion in 2013, the new building has merged all medical student programmes under one column-free roof.
The narrative bonds the poetry of light and space of the Education Center with Walt Whitman’s written lyric one. A deep voice reciting “When I heard the learn’d astronomer” from Leaves of Grass meets the sharp harmony of forms, diverse material’s temperatures, and ethereal light of the roof geometry in a crescendo of tension. The discreet presence of two young figures, running and hiding themselves, is changing the focus of the stills and gives shape to an unconventional reading of the building’s structure and its elements.
“The Education Center is part of an imposing medical city, a post-war concrete jungle shaped by pragmatism and cost-cut” says Vroegind
