Campus Albano

Construction for the Albano university campus, which covers 70,000 square metres of university premises providing 15,000 student and researcher places as well as 1,000 accom-modation places for students and researchers, was started back in 2015 and is expected to be completed in 2023. Jörgen Pudeck, architect at Cedervall Arkitekter explains further: “In 2017, we were tasked with drawing up construction documents for the two central university buildings, buildings 2 and 4, which are located at the intersection of the area’s two major thoroughfares, Albanobacken and Albanovägen. The combined gross area of these particular buildings is just over 47,000 m2, so it’s been an extensive project to say the least.” In these buildings, knowledge is fostered and crucial social and academic meeting places are being established in the form of administrative workplaces, research environments, learning environments, meeting rooms, and restaurant spaces. The whole project is about being as self-sufficient as possible, and the area’s surrounding landscape has therefore been integrated into the buildings. “Campus Albano has a unique location as part of the national city park, with environments and biotopes that promote ani-mal and plant life. Large green roof terraces on the buildings therefore emphasise the topography and benefit biodiversity,” says Jörgen. The exterior design has a top priority as the buildings are to contribute to the development of the aesthetic and cultural values of the national city park. The buildings are characterised, among other things, by curved facades which together form a soft and wave-shaped frontage. “The facades have a vertical division with storey-high sections that alternate between dense light-grey plaster, open glass surfaces, and hot-dip galvanised sheet metal panels. Each floor has its own rhythm that interacts with the others. At the entrances and places where you get close to the buildings, the facade design is softer and warmer with wooden ribwork. The walls with wooden slats also continue into the buildings at the entrances to tie the external and internal environments together,” explains Jörgen. 

Patrik Karlsson, project manager at the interior design com-pany Katako, was commissioned by Skanska to supply and install acoustic walls for buildings 1, 2 and 4 at Albano. “Our close collaboration with Cedervall Arkitekter, Akustik-miljö, and Flexplåt resulted in sound absorbers behind the ribbed wooden panels at the entrances that Jörgen talks about, as well as around 2,500 m2 of acoustic walls clad in sheet metal to create a quiet and pleasant university environ-ment.” He continues:
“The acoustic walls in sheet metal are specially adapted perforated sheet-metal cassettes with acoustic panels behind. The sound absorbers consist of Akustikmiljö’s unique Eco-SUND material, which is absolutely superb to work with. It’s poke-friendly, for example, which means that students can poke a sharp pencil into the material, which then self-heals.” The polyester fibres in EcoSUND RAW are certified in accord-ance with Oeko-Tex Standard 100, contain no binders, and cannot get mouldy thanks to their structure. It also meets the requirements for BASTA, Byggvarubedömningen, and SundaHus certification. In terms of emissions, it meets the cri-teria for Byggvarubedömningen in relation to VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) in indoor climates. It therefore complies with the strict requirements for construction materials and furnishings in a school environment. The fact that acoustics are covered at an early stage of a project, especially for a school environment, is a huge support for other aspects of planning and should almost be a matter of course, according to Jörgen at Cedervall Arkitekter:
“It’s much easier to integrate acoustic solutions into the ar-chitecture if they’re included in the planning from the outset. In teaching environments, for example, there’s often a lot of equipment and furnishings to be mounted on the walls. If needs for wall absorbers aren’t defined early on, it can be difficult to achieve good solutions. Albano is an excellent ex-ample of when co-operation between all the different parties works as it should, which of course also shows in the end result.”   Patrik at Katako agrees: 
“It was a very fun project in that it was a bit different. We usually supply suspended ceilings, but here it was walls in-stead, which made the design different from what we usually deliver. But everyone’s expertise in their specific field made it a very successful collaboration,” he concludes.