Utrecht has ca. 340,000 inhab­it­ants, mak­ing it the fourth city in the Neth­er­lands, includ­ing 30,000 stu­dents.  Loc­ated in the east of the city, the uni­ver­sity cam­pus used to con­sist of detached build­ings, float­ing in green mead­ows. In the 1990s the uni­ver­sity decided to densi­fy the sprawl accord­ing to a mas­ter­plan by OMA. A cluster of unusu­al fac­ulty build­ings was cre­ated, with the Edu­cat­ori­um by OMA and the Uni­ver­sity Lib­rary by Wiel Arets as high­lights.

From Uithof, a short coach ride takes you to the Water­line Museum, a more recent high­light of Dutch archi­tec­ture. Focus­sing on the his­tory of a mil­it­ary defense line, which enabled the Dutch to inund­ate large areas of their coun­try in case of war, the build­ing is con­struc­ted inside an old fort. The shape of the con­crete struc­ture fol­lows the topo­graph­ic lines on site.