PROTOTYPE XYZ

Designed with the AMV residents, built for belonging.

PROTOTYPE XYZ brings atmosphere, belonging and space for personal expression back into the bedroom — for unaccompanied minors living in Dutch asylum reception locations (AMV).

Earlier design research by A SENSE OF_, carried out within the Young Innovators Programme of the @college_van_rijksadviseurs mapped out how living conditions at AMV locations could be structurally improved. The findings were translated into a strategy.

PROTOTYPE XYZ, developed together with COA as a first concrete test: six units, three bedrooms — two residents per room — across two locations, Katwijk aan Zee and Gouda.

Everything in the design comes from the residents themselves. Across multiple user sessions with young people living in AMV locations, four needs kept coming up — atmosphere, belonging, storage and personal expression — and these directly shaped the prototype.

The result is a quiet enclosure built around the existing steel bed frame. A frame of impregnated 45x45mm timber beams, strong yet slender.

Fire-resistant curtains, softening the room acoustically and visually while honoring reception-facility fire codes. A reading light for studying or winding down without disturbing a roommate. A pegboard back wall for residents to hang their memories and things they treasure. Separate storage underneath the bed for clean sheets and dirty laundry — a basic need too often missing from standard reception furniture.

Structurally, it’s rigid in every direction yet fully demountable: every joint is fastened with bolts and barrel nuts through a pre-drilled grid, no extra machining needed. The object adapts to the resident, not the other way round.

From the trial period, feedback from residents and staff will go straight into the next iteration, with the ambition to scale the design on a national level.