The Life Science Building
The Life Sciences Building will be a shared facility for leading university and hospital environments within life sciences and is intended to ensure Norway's international competitiveness in the field. Here, students and various academic communities will work interdisciplinarily to develop new solutions to major challenges in health and sustainability, with access to the best and most modern equipment required to conduct world-class research and innovation.
With its 97,500 square meters, it will be Norway's largest university and hospital building. The budget is 13.3 billion NOK. The user equipment project has a budget of 1.4 billion NOK. Move-in will begin in 2026.
The building will be located in Gaustadbekkdalen, a short distance from research environments at the University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital (OUS). Collaborating research institutions and businesses will get access to use the building's facilities. The life sciences building will be the core of Norway's first innovation district - Oslo Science City. Read more about Oslo Science City (link to external website).
Interdisciplinary collaboration – convergence – groundbreaking research
The life sciences building is a concept building, planned based on the principle of convergence - the building's architecture and solutions facilitate extensive interdisciplinary collaboration. Groundbreaking research occurs when different thoughts and ideas meet across subjects and research areas. Interdisciplinary research collaborations are becoming increasingly important in responding to the challenges we face. Be it the handling of infectious diseases (pandemic), an aging population (public health), or a more sustainable society (green shift).
Better education for the future labour force
Interdisciplinary collaboration and convergence are also important for enhanced education in life science. It will be the current generation of competent students and young researchers who will create the new, sustainable products, services and jobs in new, greener industrial fields such as health and the marine sector – areas that Norway needs to bolster.
Closer collaboration to strengthen the Oslo region
The new building will also permit UiO to make better provisions for close cooperation with other links in the value chain, from basic research to application. Thus, we can reach the objective of higher quality and relevance in research and education, along with better utilization of the innovation potential in research.
The modern scientific equipment and infrastructure will be available to the outside world as well. The building is also intended to serve as a meeting place for students, research fellows, post-doctoral scholars and researchers from all of UiO and other research institutions, health enterprises, municipalities and the life-science business sector.