Henning Larsen announced that new Veterinary Building for Creatures Great, Small and Amoeboid, 63,000 square meters building, the largest public building in Norway, located at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences’s Campus Ås, brings together both research facilities and teaching space for veterinary medicine. The desire to understand the natural world has always been at the heart of human innovation but has gained critical urgency as globalism accelerates the cycle between our impact on the world and the world’s impact on us. The new veterinary building opened in late 2021 and was conceived with this cycle in mind. The Veterinary Building at Campus Ås is in fact eight distinct but linked buildings, uniting previously disparate resources (some of which were in Oslo, 30km to the north of NMBU’s main campus.) Developed for Statsbygg by Multiconsult, Henning Larsen, Fabel Arkitekter, Link Landskap, and Erichsen + Horgen, the project is one of the largest and most complex construction projects ever undertaken in Norway. The project is a bridging of gaps between great and small, hazardous and safe, clinical and human, isolated and connected. Despite the scale of the volume, which packs over 2,400 rooms into the building’s 63,000m2 of occupiable floorspace, the interiors at the Veterinary Building at Campus Ås feel almost cozy. The building rarely rises over four stories and is subdivided into eight wings which are themselves distributed between the building’s two primary programs: the Norwegian Veterinary Institute and the Norwegian University of Life Science. Things are no less complex in the research/clinical areas where, rather than facilitating casual meetings between people, different spaces must be carefully separated to avoid cross contamination. Even the animals must be carefully separated, with veterinary program divided between small and large animal clinics and subdivided further to separate healthy/injured animals from those that are ill. Fitting In, Standing OutSituated in an open landscape of soft hills, the long and low profile of Campus Ås allows it to fit in to its campus surroundings while still standing out. The façade is built up of over 300,000 hand-cut bricks, each coal fired to give them an individual sheen and texture. The reddish-brown hue of the bricks also match the surrounding campus structures, some of which date back to the campus’ foundation in 1859. Native plantings surround the bulk of the new building and can also be found up above, where sedum roofs support a prosperous insect habitat. The new Veterinary Building at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences - Campus Ås opened on 1 September 2021 for 690 students and almost 855 employees. The project is done in collaboration with Multiconsult, FABEL Arkitekter, Link Landskap og Erichsen & Horgen.
Henning Larsen announced that new Veterinary Building for Creatures Great, Small and Amoeboid, 63,000 square meters building, the largest public building in Norway, located at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences’s Campus Ås, brings together both research facilities and teaching space for veterinary medicine. The desire to understand the natural world has always been at the heart of human innovation but has gained critical urgency as globalism accelerates the cycle between our impact on the world and the world’s impact on us. The new veterinary building opened in late 2021 and was conceived with this cycle in mind. The Veterinary Building at Campus Ås is in fact eight distinct but linked buildings, uniting previously disparate resources (some of which were in Oslo, 30km to the north of NMBU’s main campus.) Developed for Statsbygg by Multiconsult, Henning Larsen, Fabel Arkitekter, Link Landskap, and Erichsen + Horgen, the project is one of the largest and most complex construction projects ever undertaken in Norway. The project is a bridging of gaps between great and small, hazardous and safe, clinical and human, isolated and connected. Despite the scale of the volume, which packs over 2,400 rooms into the building’s 63,000m2 of occupiable floorspace, the interiors at the Veterinary Building at Campus Ås feel almost cozy. The building rarely rises over four stories and is subdivided into eight wings which are themselves distributed between the building’s two primary programs: the Norwegian Veterinary Institute and the Norwegian University of Life Science. Things are no less complex in the research/clinical areas where, rather than facilitating casual meetings between people, different spaces must be carefully separated to avoid cross contamination. Even the animals must be carefully separated, with veterinary program divided between small and large animal clinics and subdivided further to separate healthy/injured animals from those that are ill. Fitting In, Standing OutSituated in an open landscape of soft hills, the long and low profile of Campus Ås allows it to fit in to its campus surroundings while still standing out. The façade is built up of over 300,000 hand-cut bricks, each coal fired to give them an individual sheen and texture. The reddish-brown hue of the bricks also match the surrounding campus structures, some of which date back to the campus’ foundation in 1859. Native plantings surround the bulk of the new building and can also be found up above, where sedum roofs support a prosperous insect habitat. The new Veterinary Building at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences - Campus Ås opened on 1 September 2021 for 690 students and almost 855 employees. The project is done in collaboration with Multiconsult, FABEL Arkitekter, Link Landskap og Erichsen & Horgen.
