Campus Roskilde | Henning Larsen

Campus Roskilde facilitates dialogue and random meetings and provides the students with a feeling of being part of manifold university environment beating with one pulse. The random meetings are an important part of the design and create learning spaces for the students both to socialize, but also to share knowledge and experiences. The learning environment comprises zones for contemplation and concentration as well as zones for communication to meet both the students and teachers need for changing between various learning and working methods. The buildings at Campus Roskilde have a clear layout staging the many contact points and the interaction between the different user groups, across departments, faculties and academic fields. The campus consists of four square buildings, which are slightly rotated towards each other in order to screen the area from the highway and create a more intimate and varied space around the campus square. In the first phase of the project only two buildings have been constructed. Energy optimization has been implemented in every aspect of the buildings. Daylight is a central architectural tool that emphasizes the viewer’s experience of being present in the moment at a specific place. Daylight is also a crucial parameter for energy efficiency. All offices and classrooms provide plentiful daylight because of their location along the peripheral zones. Due to this organization the campus has a daylight factor higher than 2 % in all student and teaching facilities. Campus Roskilde favors passive and economically-viable sustainable features over the expensive technical installations. Natural ventilation, daylight, and orientation ensure excellent effects for minimal budget. Furthermore, all artificial light fixtures employ daylight and movement sensors, ensuring 350 lux or more in all classrooms and significantly reducing operational costs. The building complex is designed as 4 separate buildings linked together to create one school. The buildings inner is held in place by two facades. Towards the South, East and West, a local yellow brick façade is the buildings acoustic barrier toward the highway, windows are placed in the façade to allow optimum daylight into classrooms and meeting spaces. A structural glazing façade towards the North opens the building towards the surrounding university and allows the softer Northern light into the building. Acoustic gypsum and glass walls are used extensively throughout the interior of the building, creating a visually open and acoustically comfortable environment. The ground floor is covered in polished concrete; the upper levels are colored linoleum.