New courtyard Bouwkunde officially opened

Two years after the first ideas about transforming the courtyard of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment into a Urban Climate Grove, was ready to be opened. On Tuesday 1 October 2024, during a festive opening, Dean Dick van Gameren, Frank van Vliet (Delft alderman for Climate, Culture and Public Space) and Renate Geven (Asset Manager Buitenruimte at campus real estate CREFM), planted the final plants. 

Many staff, students and the below mentioned parties have made this City Climate Forest possible. The core of the team consists of Rosa de Wolf, Nico Tillie (both Urban Ecology), and René van der Velde (Urban Forestry), with support from René Hoonhout (CREFM) who has been working for a greener campus for 33 years.

For years, the courtyard has hosted research into the cooling effect of potted trees. These trees are now actually in the soil. In the days before the opening, many staff and students and a group of gardeners, led by Nico Tillie and Rene Hoonhout, still worked hard to plant the lower vegetation and shrubs. Everything was ready just in time.

The new Urban Climate Grove, in the form of a tree-rich 'wadi' (Arabic for riverbed) will not only become a nicer place for students and staff. This new solution can help cool urban areas worldwide and increase biodiversity. As a ‘living lab’, the forecourt offers space for further research and contributes to the greening of the TU Delft campus and the city of Delft.