Riegler Riewe Architekten

Description

The concept for the new campus of the Medical University of Graz aims to combine work, teaching and leisure spaces to form a shared inner-city campus. The project lays out a clearly structured ensemble of coherent yet differentiated buildings, thoughtfully taking the various requirements into account. Openness, accessibility and communication play important roles in this regard. The campus is marked by a clear placement of the volumes, creating an exciting interplay between buildings and open spaces, between public and non-public uses, that results in a high potential for identification in an urban context. Narrow structures organised lengthwise were developed as a contemporary response to the local microclimatic parameters. The central areas for teaching, such as lecture halls and the auditorium, were built to span the first two storeys, on top of which rests the campus level, as it is known, as an important distribution network from which the institutes, laboratories and research areas are accessed. A pedestrian and cycle bridge on the campus level connects further teaching areas, the canteen and the administration offices. The result is a superordinate network of footpaths and cycle paths that even connect to the nearby University Hospital Graz. The new campus of the Medical University of Graz was certified in accordance with the Austrian Sustainable Building Council (ÖGNI) and DGNB criteria, even achieving a platinum DGNB Certification.