From Classroom to Cityverse: Katoenhuis x Hogeschool Rotterdam Shape Rotterdam’s Digital Future
How should Rotterdam evolve in an increasingly digital future? Who gets to shape that future? And how can immersive technologies contribute to a city that remains democratic, inclusive, and connected to the needs of its citizens?
These are some of the questions explored by students participating in the Katoenhuis x Hogeschool Rotterdam residency programme. Now in its second year, the twenty-week programme brought together students from different disciplines to work on societal challenges while developing the skills needed to collaborate across fields, connect with industry partners, and engage with real-world innovation.
Hosted at Katoenhuis, South Holland’s IX hub imagining new realities, the programme reflects a shared commitment to talent development, knowledge exchange, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Rather than working solely within the classroom, students become part of a wider ecosystem of researchers, public institutions, cultural organisations, entrepreneurs, and immersive technology professionals, gaining first-hand experience of how ideas move from concept to practice.
This year's focus is the Cityverse: the intersection of the physical, digital, and social worlds. Developed together with the Municipality of Rotterdam and regional partners, the concept offers a democratic and inclusive alternative to the commercially driven vision of the metaverse. Rather than leaving the development of future digital environments solely in the hands of large technology companies, the Cityverse asks how governments, citizens, educational institutions, and cultural organisations can actively shape digital transformation in ways that benefit society.
Learning Beyond the Classroom
The twenty-week programme brings together students from different disciplines to work on complex societal challenges. While technical expertise remains important, the programme recognises that contemporary challenges cannot be solved from a single perspective.
Students from different educational backgrounds collaborate in multidisciplinary teams, learning not only how to contribute their own expertise but also how to understand the perspectives and working methods of others. As participants discover, solving societal challenges requires people who can bridge different forms of knowledge and learn to speak each other's professional language.
The programme has two interconnected goals. The first is educational: preparing students for professional environments where collaboration across disciplines is essential. The second is societal: enabling students to contribute to questions that matter beyond the classroom.
Working at Katoenhuis helps strengthen this connection to the real world. Instead of remaining within the boundaries of a traditional educational setting, students become part of a broader ecosystem that includes researchers, municipalities, cultural organisations, and industry professionals. They gain insight into current developments in immersive technologies while engaging directly with people working in the field.
Katoenhuis as a Living Learning Environment
As a hub for immersive experiences and a place to imagine new realities, Katoenhuis brings together artists, technologists, researchers, entrepreneurs, public institutions, and educational partners under one roof. The goal is not only to develop new technologies, but to investigate how these technologies can contribute to society in meaningful and inclusive ways.
For students, this means learning in an environment that extends beyond the classroom. Instead of working on hypothetical assignments, they become part of an active ecosystem where immersive technologies are being developed, tested, discussed, and applied. They encounter professionals from different sectors, gain insight into ongoing projects, and experience first–hand how innovation emerges through collaboration.
The setting itself plays an important role. With its industrial character, large-scale spaces, and facilities for immersive installations, Katoenhuis offers opportunities that are difficult to replicate in a traditional educational environment. The building encourages experimentation, making, and exchange. It is a place where prototypes can be tested, ideas can be challenged, and unexpected connections can emerge.
Equally important is the community that inhabits the space. Katoenhuis functions as a meeting ground where students, cultural practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and industry professionals work alongside one another.
This aligns closely with Katoenhuis' broader mission: to strengthen the connection between immersive technology, culture, and society. By facilitating collaborations such as the programme with Hogeschool Rotterdam, Katoenhuis helps create an environment where knowledge is exchanged across disciplines, where experimentation leads to new insights, and where innovation remains connected to societal needs.
The Cityverse projects are one example of this approach in action. Through their work, students contribute fresh perspectives to questions about the digital future of Rotterdam, while at the same time becoming part of a wider network of organisations shaping that future. In this way, Katoenhuis serves not only as a workspace, but as a platform where learning, innovation, and societal impact intersect.
Exploring the Cityverse
This year's projects explore different dimensions of the Cityverse and Rotterdam's digital future. Around elight multidisciplinary student teams are currently working on separate projects within the broader theme.
Some teams are experimenting with Rotterdam's digital twin, a virtual representation of the city built on open municipal data. Students investigate how this data can be used to create new virtual environments and experiences, while also exploring how digital representations of the city might benefit residents, policymakers, and businesses.
Other projects engage with historical data from the Municipal Archives. By combining archival materials with immersive technologies, students investigate whether parts of Rotterdam from centuries ago can be reconstructed and experienced in virtual environments. These experiments raise broader questions about how digital spaces can help us understand the past, imagine the future, and engage citizens in new ways.
The Cityverse umbrella also encompasses themes such as future skills for work, youth participation, digital inclusion, municipal services, and the relationship between technological development and democratic governance.
Importantly, the projects are not viewed primarily as finished products. Their value lies in the knowledge they generate. Students follow an iterative process of research, prototyping, testing, and refinement, producing tangible outcomes while contributing to longer-term learning.
Creating Continuity
One of the ambitions of the collaboration is to ensure that knowledge is not lost when a semester ends.
Partners are exploring ways to create continuity between student cohorts so that projects can be continued, expanded, and refined over multiple years. In this model, students contribute fresh perspectives and creativity, while long-term partners carry forward accumulated knowledge and maintain strategic direction.
The collaboration already involves a growing network of organisations, including the Municipality of Rotterdam, the Municipal Archives, Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Future Insight, and various research centres and industry partners.
Together, they form a learning community in which education, research, government, and practice continuously inform one another.
For Katoenhuis and Hogeschool Rotterdam, the ultimate goal is not simply to develop new technologies. It is to create a space where people can collectively experiment with the future and explore how digital innovation can remain democratic, inclusive, and socially meaningful.
For more information visit: www.katoenhuis.nl and www.hogeschoolrotterdam.nl
Photos from residency process at Katoenhuis and the final exhibition at Hogeschool Rotterdam.