The Karolinska Institute is the largest medical university in Sweden and one of the largest medical universities in Europe. It was founded in 1810, and although it now has a huge campus in Solna (now part of Stockholm), the university until very recently did not have a spacious auditorium in which both scientific conferences and lectures for all students could be held. right away. Only in the early 2000s, funds were raised for the creation of such a hall: they were donated by private benefactors, but even after that, its design and construction dragged on for another decade.
A competition for the best design for the institute's main audience was held in 2001, and Geert Wingord's bureau won a landslide victory. However, the site for construction was too modest - both in area and location (surrounded on all sides by educational and hospital buildings, it was actually lost among them), and after a couple of years the management of the institute decided to replace the site. At the same time, the relationship with the architect was not interrupted: for the new location, Wingord developed a completely new project.
The Aula Medica auditorium is built at the intersection of Solnavegen Street and the pedestrian axis that will connect the institute with the new hospital building currently under construction. Solnavegen is, in turn, a major highway, perhaps the main transport artery of the Solna district. But it will also face cardinal changes in the near future: it is planned that after the reconstruction, the traffic intensity here will significantly decrease, and Solnavegen will turn from a transit highway into a full-fledged city street. These perspective development plans directly affected the architectural appearance of the projected hall.
The architects predictably placed the main entrance to the building from the side of the pedestrian boulevard, but they did not want to completely turn away from the street, which in the future will acquire a human scale. Therefore, the initially triangular volume acquires a rather elongated "nose". From the side of the roadway, the building looks like a giant liner, which seems to lurch on a bend, forming a dynamic diagonal.
The expression of the form is multiplied by the chosen cladding: the facades, like a puzzle, are "recruited" from triangular glass panels. There are six of them in total - from completely transparent and slightly tinted to rich white and gold. The glasses are fixed on a triangular mesh made of wood, which, along with the multicolored reflections of light, defines the look of the interior.
In addition to the actual auditorium, designed for 1000 people, the building housed the administration of the institute and the teachers' club, and the system of developed triangular trusses developed by the architects made it possible to locate these premises above the conference hall.
