Rooms in shared flats are often expensive and hard to find. Especially in Heidelberg. Students and trainees have therefore created their own living space on a former US military site there. The Collegium Academicum offers space for around 250 people—and plenty of open space.
Franziska Meier sits on a terrace in Heidelberg and makes herself heard against the construction noise. Heavy machinery roars over from the neighbouring property. The remodelling of the US Hospital conversion site in Heidelberg is in full swing. Steel rods rise into the sky. It smells of concrete and cement. On the Collegium Academicum (CA) property, however, you feel more like being in a cosy sauna. There is wood on the walls and ceilings, and a shade of light brown dominates the exterior instead of dull grey. Wooden grids can be slid in front of the windows to protect the interior against the sun. Dowels and boards—instead of screws—connect the beams that hold up the building. “Just like in an old half-timbered house,” Franziska explains. And yet it’s quite forward-looking.

Made of wood and initiated, planned, built and now managed by students themselves, the Collegium Academicum in the Rohrbach district is a special residence hall in many ways. The flatmates of a flat share in Plöck thought out a concept for it in 2013. The project made it into the Heidelberg International Building Exhibition (IBA) in 2016. Some 176 students, doctoral students and trainees moved into the new building in 2023. Another 80 people moved into an existing building next door in 2024. A room in the CA costs 375 euros, significantly less than elsewhere in Heidelberg. Apart from a private room in the flat share, the living space includes plenty of communal areas, such as a rooftop terrace, the garden, a multifunctional room with kitchen, workshop and, of course, the assembly hall, which offers space for more than 600 people and where public events like readings, panel discussions and parties take place. “What is going on here is impressive,” says Franziska, who co-founded the project.

When she moved to Heidelberg in 2012 to do her Master’s degree, the historian quickly felt cramped in the city. “There were far fewer open spaces than in Erfurt where I had previously lived,” she recalls. The flat share in Heidelberg that she lived in back then regularly hosted seminars. They were about organic viticulture, de-growth and feminism. But the students wanted even more: an entire residence hall that would not only provide a roof over their heads, but also a creative space. It should become a place similar to the Collegium Academicum, which existed in Heidelberg’s old town from 1945 to 1978. Students, including the writer Rafik Schami, had lived there in a self-governing manner until they were evicted so the building could be used by the university. Franziska designed an exhibition about the eventful history of that residence hall in 2015.