PROJECTS
“I think the time pressure helped us. There was no time to waste thinking about things. We had to come up with answers quickly”
For this reason, van de Graaf suggested making the new restaurant vegetarian, thus saving the carbon emissions caused by meat production. The executive board was a little anxious about this as the business model of the restaurant was to attract faculty members so they would not want to go to the restaurants of Delft. “It was exciting because it was working towards the university’s carbon neutral goals, but it might have deterred some employees from visiting because they wanted to offer meat to their guests,” van de Graaf explains. The restaurant had attracted the services of
Jeremaih Teeling – a chef highly skilled in plant- based cuisine. The restaurant was not labelled vegetarian, it just served great food and people did not notice the lack of meat. To further focus on sustainability, suppliers and products are as local as possible. This also chimes with the university’s commitment to working with the local community. The new kitchen is equipped by Metos in the Netherlands.
Scheduling problems
Opposite page: The high-end, plant-based cuisine has been a complete hit. The restaurant is designed to be a quiet haven in the busy TU Delft campus
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After months of preparation and research into the project, plus a successful presentation, final approval was given in February 2021. The executive board wanted the club up and running for the start of the new academic year in September. “We had to work very hard to get things done,” says van de Graaf. “From approval we had to get the buy-in from the department of procurement; the drawings had to be made operational; then we had to order materials and then build. It was a very tight schedule.” The schedule hit an obstacle in the university’s IT department. It has been upgrading the cabling in all the campus buildings and when they saw that the ceiling in the new restaurant had been removed they seized the opportunity to update the cabling in
the building and hide it in the ceiling space. “I asked how much time they would need,” says van de Graaf. “They asked for a month, I gave them three days. We wanted to help them with the project, but we were on a tight schedule. The IT department got most of what they needed to do done.”
Flexible and functional There was a lot to be done. The building was one room with no division between the restaurant area and the bar. They built a wall of opaque glass, allowing the light to come through while creating a separate area. It only became apparent during the build that this created a problem with the air circulation, which was installed for the one big room. “I think the time pressure helped us,” says van de Graaf. “There was no time to waste thinking about things. We had to come up with answers quickly. There’s another Dutch saying; ‘without friction there’s no gloss’. Different parties were involved such as the department responsible for the building. It is actually an historic monument so we couldn’t alter it too much. We had architects on our back throughout, which makes the timeframe even more incredible.” Pieter van de Graaf’s area of expertise is in project management, hence his ability to get this project done in such a short time. He is proud of the fact that the project got done and provides a flexible, functional space. There are 60 covers and if there are not many tables booked in, the drinking area can be closed off to make it more intimate – and opened up again at busier times “We evaluated the project after it was finished,”
says van de Graaf. “Almost everything we’d done was not according to the usual process of the university, but we made it happen on time and within budget.” This is testament to the preparation and project management skills of van de Graaf and his team.
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