Dr Jadoul’s villa is set to be given a new lease of life as the ‘Het Cabinet’ student residence
09/04/2026
The façade of the stately interwar-era house on Koningin Astridlaan will be preserved.
‘Het Cabinet’. That is the name of the new student residence just outside Hasselt’s inner ring road. It is a clear nod to the villa’s past, dating back to 1933. Originally, it served as a dental practice; in 1955, the well-known Hasselt doctor and pulmonologist Valentin Jadoul moved in. Plans to convert the property into a student residence had already been mooted in recent years. Property developer ION will now bring those plans to fruition.
We are approaching this project with great care, respecting the character of Koningin Astridlaan. That is why we are, first and foremost, preserving the façade of the interwar-era house and constructing a new three-storey building behind and alongside it. Thanks to a slight recess between the villa and the new building, it will appear as though there are two separate buildings standing side by side. The façade of the new building will be clad in beige bricks, thereby preserving the character of Hasselt’s streetscape.
51 student rooms
The residence has been designed by Pilar Architects and will accommodate 51 students. They can choose from a mix of rooms with shared shower, toilet and private washbasin, and rooms with an en-suite bathroom. There will also be a number of rooms adapted for students with disabilities. The room sizes range from approximately 13 to 29 m². Each floor will also feature a communal kitchen, where residents can socialise, cook and eat together.
The rear garden will feature a bicycle shelter with a green roof, and rainwater will be collected and infiltrated. In this way, the project contributes to a sustainable design without compromising on quality or comfort. Furthermore, thanks to the caretaker’s residence on site, there will be permanent supervision. ‘Het Cabinet’ will be a comfortable place to live, study, make friends and unwind in bustling Hasselt.
Growth in student numbers
With ‘Het Cabinet’, ION is helping to address the rapidly growing number of Belgian and Dutch students in Hasselt. As Limburg’s largest city, with some 23,000 students, Hasselt is one of the most important centres of higher education in Flanders, boasting a strong and ever-growing presence from Hasselt University, PXL University of Applied Sciences, UCLL Limburg and KU Leuven’s Diepenbeek campus.
In the 2027 academic year, the Faculty of Business Economics at Hasselt University, which has around 1.350 students, will also be moving from the Diepenbeek campus to the centre of Hasselt on Koning Boudewijnlaan. With ‘Het Cabinet’, we can offer some of these students who are moving into student accommodation safe, high-quality accommodation, close to the campus and the station.
The property developer, incidentally, has considerable expertise in the field of student accommodation. In recent years, it has developed various halls of residence across Belgium. With nearly 1,450 student rooms already completed and 2,200 in the pipeline, ION is one of the largest developers in the student accommodation sector in our country. These range from entirely new builds, such as ‘Mint’ in Leuven, ‘De Kroon’ in Ghent and the 53-metre-high ‘The Sky’ in Kortrijk, to conversion projects such as ‘Meyboom’ and ‘La Rosée’ in Brussels.
If everything goes according to plan, work on ‘Het Cabinet’ could start later this year. Rooms are already on sale from €131,000, excluding costs. The first students are expected at the start of the 2028–2029 academic year.
You can find more information at hetcabinet.be.
