Rust in urbe: one of the most daring and inventive university complexes of the 1970s has been extended and augmented with sympathy for the existing buildings and for the students who use them - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, May, 2002 by Henry Miles

UNIVERSITY, ODENSE, FYN, DENMARK

ARCHITECT

CUBO ARKITEKTER

Odense University was one of the minor architectural Meccas of the early 1970s. The ordered modular ranks of the small technological and business institution, designed by Knud Holscher working with Alan Tye, contrasted with the tranquil green countryside of Fyn, the still largely pastoral island between Sealand and Jutland. The contrast was intensified because the buildings were clad in Cor-Ten rusted steel, that wonder material which promised economical, eternally maintenance-free metal buildings. Brown against green, precise, almost timber-like detailing contrasted with fecund vegetation. On the whole, the place has worn well, and become even more bosky. Now, the university campus has acquired a social centre and a couple of new faculties as the first part of an expansion programme put out to competition in 1997. CUBO, the firm that won, decided to reverse the relationships between concrete and steel of the original complex. The original buildings are largely brown with very little grey. In the new ones, co ncrete often predominates, to the extent that the new entrance to the whole campus seems rather unwelcoming, if elegant, with a glazed volume projecting slightly proud of two concrete planes. The glass box hovers over a cavern, which in many lights seems dark and mysterious.

Once in the cavern, a generous pair of stairs beckons upwards towards the luminous box. Here is the main new space of the university: the double-height interior campustorv (campus square). Its big volume is flanked on both sides by pierced opaque walls, but it is surprisingly luminous -- one of the criticisms of Holscher and Tye's original design was that it was too impervious to the external elements. Light pours into the campustorv from the huge north-facing window over the entrance cavern, and from a clerestory that runs along the whole east side of the hall. But there are more subtle sources of luminance as well. A long thin skylight draws you forwards towards the university's central street that runs south from here through the whole complex. The most subtle source of luminance is the west wall. Here a series of horizontal slots pour patterns of brightness onto the floor; the slots open into a long thin light-chute that can in some conditions even deliver sunlight through the slots to the hall.

To left and right of the top of the stairs are glazed links to the new faculties: a bridge to the right (west) takes you over the university's service road to social sciences; to the left is the health science faculty. Two internal bridges fly across the great hall. Above the entrance stairs is the restaurant bridge, a broad platform that looks north over the new arrival piazza towards the protected traditional woodland beyond. Southwards, the restaurant looks down into the hall towards the other bridge, which is a long glazed reading room, from which weary scholars can gaze down on the busy life of the campus below.

The two flanking faculties have similar spatial and functional strategies. Fundamentally rectangular blocks are carved into by green courtyards. Links to the main building arrive at internal institute squares, which are surrounded by rooms used by the whole faculty. Rooms (laboratories or studies overlooking the courts) become more specialized and personal towards the ends of each block.

Differences in function are indicated outside by changes of material. External and some internal walls are in-situ concrete. Floors are of pre-stressed planks. Sun-facing windows of teaching spaces, auditoria and laboratories have adjustable screens that can be arranged to provide blackout for lectures.

Odense has been amalgamated with another institute to form the South Danish University. But the recent additions show that the heroic idealism of the 1970s has not been lost nearly 40 years later, and the identity of the place has been reinforced.

RELATED ARTICLE:

Architect

CUBO Arkitekter

Project team

Peter Dahl Larsen, Ove Helm, Robert Hansen, Heike Welssbach, Jens Martinsen, Torben Buch Schytt, Helge Davldsen, Tom Moenbe Gregersen, Sanne Lenler Schou Broeng, Martin Horsager Clausen, Egon Age Jacobsen, Jette Rix, Niels Straarup

Engineer

Lemming & Erichsen

Landscape architect

Landskab Arhus

Photographs

Poul Pedersen