WAN AWARDS 13 Sustainable Building of the Year

The Knowledge Centre, opened in September 2013, completes the overall scheme for the hospital grounds that has been ongoing since the design competition in 1995, and is centrally located in the heart of the 225.000 m2 hospitaldevelopment in Trondheim, Norway.

Designed with a strong emphasis on functionality and usability, the Knowledge Centre will provide facilities for both St. Olav’s Hospital and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The building services include outpatient treatment rooms, advanced laboratories, offices, isolated beds, wards, medical/public library, study rooms, auditoriums, canteen and restaurant.
The main building structure is wrapped around the primary place of sharing knowledge; the “egg-shaped” auditoriums – made of an exposed three-dimensional diagrid wooden construction.
As the first hospital building in Northern Europe, the recently completed Knowledge Centre at St. Olav’s Hospital is built to passive house standards. On average energy consumption will be reduced by 75% compared to existing health buildings.
This 18.000 m2 building saves 2 million kWh per year, and has proven that it is possible to make significant savings even in the most energy intensive buildings – hospitals. It also makes the passivehouse-facade a huge and unique work of integrated art and architecture, facing the new urban plaza of the city.
Incorporated in the facades is a unique and completely integrated artwork, refining the building components already present in the passive house building. The artistic combination of external walls with white printed glass-cladding and black print on the white sunscreens makes the look of the facades change during the day, dependent on the solar heat load.
All the technical installations save energy, working together with the extremely well insulated building - intelligently controlled by a centralized system. Some examples - the indoor lighting has daylightsensors, and are turned on/off as the sunshades go up and down. And 90% of the heat in the indoor air is recycled, ventilation is controlled by CO2-sensors. All materials used are sustainable, healthy, and makes a highly useable and humane hospital building.

The Knowledge centre is the winner of “INSIDE Award” 2013 at World Architecture Festival in Singapore, “Worlds best interior”, health, and got shortlisted at the WAF Award 2013 in the health category. It also received honorable mention at the prestigious Norwegian award Statens byggeskikkpris 2013. Architect: RATIO Arkitekter, Norway, and Nordic Office of Architecture, Norway.

The inspiring design of the hospital's passive facade was the initial draw for the jury, leading on to the stunning interior design and use of materials, namely the wooden structural feature in the auditorium. This project really highlighted how there can be energy savings in even the most energy-intensive sector - healthcare. Our panel thought that this was a great example of how careful design integration with sustainable techniques can lead to beautiful results and were happy to place this in the shortlist early on.