About us
HZ Studio – Impact Lab is both a physical space and an educational concept. It was established during the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2021–2022 academic year, a time when many internships and minors abroad where canceled. To avoid study delays, an environment was created where students could continue working on their personal and academic goals, without falling too far behind.
Impact Lab offers a professional, office-like setting where students engage with real-life challenges relevant to the Zeeland region—all with the shared mission of making the region more future-proof.
From the beginning, Impact Lab was designed to be interdisciplinary, welcoming students from all study programs. In today’s world, where complex societal challenges require collaboration across disciplines, this approach is more important than ever. Impact Lab helps prepare HZ students for this reality by offering a space to not only work in diverse project teams but also to tackle the kinds of problems they will face in their professional lives.
Additionally, Impact Lab embraces international participation, enriching the experience through cultural diversity and multiple perspectives. The combination of different academic backgrounds, cultures, and languages creates a dynamic learning environment. Collaboration and mutual learning are at the heart of everything we do—and that’s what makes Impact Lab so valuable.
Why do we call it Impact Lab? We see the range of projects as metaphorical cars that need repairs. Impact Lab is always open, and ‘mechanics’ (students) constantly work as cars come and go. The cars, as a metaphor for the projects, are in need of a certain fix. The repair takes a certain amount of time, approach, and tools.
