Oslo, Norway
2010 - 2021
Norwegian University of Life Sciences
Unprecedented in the history of Norway's public buildings, the Veterinary Building at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences’ Campus Ås combines an educational institution, a state research center, and emergency care facilities into a single network of welcoming structures, making it the largest public building in the country.
Project details
Opened in 2021, Campus Ås accommodates and supports an ambitious confluence of academics and specialized research, uniting laboratories, research facilities, and teaching spaces for veterinary medicine. Despite the scale of the building, which packs over 2,400 rooms into 63,000 m², the building rarely rises over four stories, and thus remains at human scale. Subdivided into eight distinct but connected wings, it houses two primary programs: the Norwegian Veterinary Institute, and the Norwegian University of Life Science.
“It is the first campus of its kind,” says Karoline Igland, Head of Department at Henning Larsen’s Oslo office. “No building anywhere in the world unites the same range of researchers and experts or has the same requirements in terms of safety and readiness. In addition to being a technically advanced and highly secure facility, it also needed to be an open arena for students and faculty. The result you see today has required ten years of collaboration, research, and innovation.”
Campus Ås brings scientists, researchers, practitioners, and students together in a complex architectural organism. Our team saw the project as a home of contradictions, creating a design that would bridge great and small, hazardous and safe, clinical and human, isolated and connected. Rather than try to join the mass under a single roof, the building’s program distributes different functions across a number of smaller modules, and features interiors designed to promote a sense of comfort and coziness. Breaking down the scale of the structure, this introduces a level of intimacy to the project.
“No building anywhere in the world unites the same range of researchers and experts or has the same requirements in terms of safety and readiness.”
Karoline Igland
Head of Department, Henning Larsen Oslo
Spatial solutions prioritizing safety
In close consultation with its users, an international advisory panel, and 120 specialized engineers, we designed a facility that safely combines animal operating theaters, educational spaces, and secure research laboratories that often involve highly sensitive and even hazardous materials.
The design takes the safety of the students, researchers, and teachers very seriously, placing infectious-disease laboratories and surgical suites in the center, where they are protected from the ring of public-program spaces on the campus’ exterior. Emergency protocols for lockdown have been designed to affect smaller modules that can be locked down individually, rather than affecting the entire facility, and thus allowing the school to take on a public function.
Further supporting the safety strategy of the building, graphic way-finding was integrated into the design ensuring positive navigation experiences within the intricate structures, whether day-to-day or in the case of an emergency.
01/07
Fostering healthy learning
Research shows that learning environments have significant impacts on the success of education, and that the presence of informal and social spaces inside higher education facilities benefit the well-being and innovative capacities of students.
We conceived the interlinked structures of the Veterinary Building at Campus Ås with this in mind. Our design offers informal social spaces for researchers, faculty, students, and visiting experts to meet throughout the stables, barns, aquariums, animal clinics, hydrotherapy pools, riding halls, laboratories, autopsy rooms, classrooms, offices, libraries, and canteens.
“In addition to being a technically advanced and highly secure facility, it also needed to be an open arena for students and faculty. The result you see today has required ten years of collaboration, research, and innovation.”
Karoline Igland
Head of Department, Henning Larsen Oslo
Integrated within its surroundings
Situated in an open landscape of soft hills, the long and low profile of Campus Ås allows it to fit in within its environment, while simultaneously standing out. The façade is built of over 300,000 hand-cut bricks, each one coal-fired to give it a uniquely individual sheen and texture. The reddish-brown hue of the bricks also matches the surrounding campus structures, some of which date back to the campus’ foundation in 1859.
Sedum roofs and an abundance of green spaces with native plantings surround the bulk of the building, supporting a thriving insect habitat that promotes biodiversity across the campus.
Balancing technical demands with ecologically responsible measures, the facility’s energy consumption is anticipated to be 25 to 50 percent lower than the Norwegian TEK10 sustainable-construction standards.
A dedicated and multi-functional communal space, on campus
Linking the preexisting university buildings and the new veterinary building, is Urban Lab, a multi-functional communal building that includes a canteen, library, auditorium, and study spaces. A campus hub that accommodates students, workers, and visitors at Campus Ås, the building is situated on a new park that joins all three areas of the campus, creating new connections and spaces to congregate.
Designed in collaboration with Fabel Architects, the 2,400 m² timber building includes a glulam structure with burned and naturally grayed wood exteriors. Inside, the open staircase extends out into the tree-lined slope that the structure sits within. Seen through the transparent façade, the interaction between outdoors and indoors, nature and culture, becomes an integral part of the building.
Using a variety of timber materials, the project showcases the strongest attributes of wood: the integrity of the structure, the resilience of the forest, and the warmth of the interior.
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