The new campus will be a significant landmark in the city.
According to plans, students and employees of the University of Southern Denmark will be able to move to a new building by 2014. The building will be constructed as an elegant triangle with 5 floors, and it will be located between the city centre and Kolding Å (stream).
The building, which is to make room for approximately 1500 full-time students and 900 part-time students, will be a new centre of excellence within learning in the fields of communication, design, culture and languages.
The new campus of the University of Southern Denmark will be Denmark’s first low-energy university – with innovative solutions within energy consumption and indoor climate, for example by installing combined cooling and heatpump equipment powered by ground water.
Henning Larsen Architects have made the drawings for the significant and innovative building, in which an inner triangular atrium rotates downwards through 5 floors, spreading a natural light from above.
The Danish University and Property Agency (Universitets- og Bygningsstyrelsen) is the developer of the sustainable building to replace the old campus of the University of Southern Denmark at the old hospital of Kolding on Engstien.
The new site closer to the city is made available by the municipality of Kolding in order to strengthen the co-operation between the educational institutions of the city.
The new campus is thus centrally located – close to harbour, railway station and the stream – with Kolding School of Design and the International Business College Kolding as neighbours.
Firstly, 13,600 square metres will be built. The many square metres are a part of an overall plan that further includes a research park and stage two of the construction of the university. The construction sum for the first stage is expected to be of DKK 280 million.
It is a prerequisite for the construction that the National Parliament of Denmark creates the legal basis on the Finance Act of 2011 for the municipality of Kolding to subsidise and provide a site for the construction. After this it is up to the finance committee to approve the project.