MED CAMPUS LINZ

LORENZATELIERS, with its urban concept, was the unanimously chosen winner for the EU-wide competition for the new buildings of the Faculty of Medicine in Linz. The special appeal of this project lies in the chance to create a part of inner city including the General Hospital and the University.

The campus idea promotes research, exchange and communication. The mixture of teaching and research rooms, offices, library, café, supermarket and shops around an open campus creates a lively, attractive city atmosphere. 1,800 students as well as 250 professors and scientific staff will learn, teach and research in the 12,500 m² building.

The large building volume is combined in four structures around a common square. The four main functions – lecture halls, laboratories, offices and library – will each be accommodated in a building. The division into four separate constructions makes it possible to develop optimal spatial, technical and design solutions for the different functions. To the outside these buildings form a compact ensemble between the general hospital, the blood donor centre, Krankenhausstraße and the park. The central square in the middle is at the intersection of the formed paths. It opens to the adjacent spaces becoming an urban meeting place. In the buildings ground floor areas around the square are located public functions such as foyer, cafe, meeting room and shops. At its highest point, the Med Campus culminates in a skybar at the top floor of the Administration Building. While originally a restaurant was suggested in addition to the room program, an event space for the Faculty of Medicine was ultimately realized.

Meinhard Lukas, Rector of the Johannes Kepler University: “The winning project of LORENZATELIERS creates an open, modern and above all inspiring place. The people who teach, study and research at the Faculty of Medicine will feel comfortable in these buildings”.

DIALOGUE OF COLOR AND MATERIAL

A color palette of 10 colors is selected for the four structures. These, inspired by the “Polychromie architecturale” by Le Corbusier, support each other and emphasize the space: ocher, yellow, red and mixtures of these to represent gravity and statics, blue to emphasize and expand the space and black to add objects to put in the background. The red tones can be found on the ceramic facade, the blue tones on the steel facade, ocher and yellow on the concrete and wooden buildings. The color accents also appear inside: on the blue carpets in the offices, on the red rubber floors, doors, and acoustic panels in the laboratories, and on the chairs, think tanks, acoustic panels, and lighting-acoustic pads in the library. The furniture and its details are deliberately simple – Architettura povera – the materials show themselves as they are with their haptics and their colors.