Plans for development of Medicinarberget have entered a highly active phase. If all the ideas that are now on the table pan out, the area will look very different within only a few years. Dean Olle Larkö paints the picture of a campus bustling with life, cafes and eager young faces.
“We must consolidate our research, grow our facilities and upgrade Medicinareberget. Our research teams both there and at the hospital are much too spread out. If we want to be a force to reckon with in the future, our researchers must have ready access to each other. We need more space that can provide for new and expanding teams. The worn-down state of the present buildings poses a significant hardship for students, many of whom sit in the hallways and do their studying. There are not enough lecture halls, and those that exist are too small and ill-suited to the teaching and learning methods of today. We need greater, more integrated opportunities for simulation training in various hospital settings, particularly the ability of different programs to coordinate their efforts.
“Plans for Medicinarberget and the Sahlgrenska hospital area are still fairly vague. The drawings of possible building sites and their sizes are approximate and no major decisions have yet been made. But the project has gained momentum and will soon be more clear and specific. A local plan may be in place within a year or so. SveaNor, the real estate company that is managing the project for the new care and research building on Per Dubbsgatan, anticipates that construction will begin in a little over two years.
In other words, nobody who wants to affect the plans can afford to twiddle their thumbs.
“We will shortly be launching detailed discussions that permit the various institutes to make their opinions and needs known.”
“Here is my personal vision of what Medicinarberget will look like in 2021. The present setup will evolve into a Sahlgrenska Campus bustling with life and eager young faces. Way up at the top by the Pharmaceutical and Nutrition Center and Hälsovetarbacken will be a new collaborative building that houses a library, restaurant and cafe. Students, researchers and administrative staff from three faculties will interact in the building and the new hall will feature lectures that everyone longs to hear.
“Sahlgrenska Academy and Sahlgrenska University Hospital will not be connected by walkways only. As early as 2020, our programs will join together in three large buildings that have been constructed with the demands of twenty-first century research and development in mind. The structure that currently goes under the working name of Building 1 will accommodate laboratory medicine, diagnosis, development and innovation. Building 3, which will be on the Medicinareberget side of Per Dubbsgatan where the old orthopedic center is presently located, will consolidate all experimental research to optimize collaboration. The new Center for Molecular Medicine, which recently obtained funding from the Alice and Knut Wallenberg Foundation, may operate out of the building.
“Both structures will be connected to Building 2. The multistory building will straddle Per Dubbsgatan, interweaving the worlds of academia and health care.”
My hope is that the hospital director and my successor will work there, preferably next door to each other.
“That would truly take advantage of our physical proximity to the hospital.”
