The inauguration of Forum Medicum was celebrated in a festive manner on 30 August with music, aerial acrobatics and a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Vice-Chancellor Erik Renström described the building as “The gem on Sölvegatan”.
Forum Medicum will be home to about 170 research teams, 1,600 staff and 2,000 students. The centre brings together academia, industry, healthcare and the general public to promote interdisciplinary collaborations in medicine and the life sciences.
Welcome to Forum Medicum
Forum Medium will be a new meeting place for the University’s staff and students in the middle of the Knowledge Highway. The large atrium and café/restaurant are open to everyone. There is ample seating in the open areas and many benches outside around the building. With its many study spaces, the building gives the University’s students the opportunity to use the open study areas and the teaching facilities that are not booked.
According to the manager of the Forum Medicum project, Jakob Donnér, the best place in the building is the foyer.
“Just to stand there after 10 years of work on the vision, project and construction and see all the colleagues and students spreading like ants in all directions through the building. There is life and movement the whole time and everyone seems so happy. It is both surprising and pleasing that the acoustics are so good pretty much everywhere in the building.”
The restaurant/café, Stamstället, offers an eat in or take away option from a selection that includes soup, meat/fish, vegan/vegetarian dishes and a salad bar.
A new meeting centre offers venues of various sizes (including meeting rooms in the older buildings). As of 1 November, staff from outside the Faculty of Medicine can book meeting rooms. Using eduroam, wireless connection to screens is simple and the technical equipment in the rooms makes it easy to hold online meetings.
Forum Medicum has a new full-scale laboratory, MoReLab (Movement and Reality Lab), for experimental health sciences research. It is the first of its kind in Sweden and contains, among other things, simulated housing for the study of home environments.
The workplaces for researchers and teaching staff in the new part of Forum Medicum consist for the most part of open plan workspaces with personal desks. The teaching facilities are mainly made up of active learning classrooms with the latest technical equipment, along with a large number of group and supervision rooms. The teaching staff have already found a way to work in this new learning environment and adapt their teaching methods to the opportunities provided by the new spaces.
Forum Medicum is one of the biggest investments made by Akademiska Hus and Lund University and was completed on time and within budget. The building has been given Gold ”Miljöbyggnad” certification from the Swedish Green Building Council and active work has been conducted to reduce climate impact through the reuse of materials and efficient energy usage.
The architect, Ingela Larsson of Henning Larsen Architects, emphasises the building’s flexibility and sustainability for the future. The building is designed to be adaptable to changing needs in education and research over time and is constructed using materials that are intended to endure.
