Steno Diabetes Center, Copenhagen

Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen is located at Herlev Hospital and is specialized in the treatment, research and prevention of diabetes as well as in the training of healthcare personnel in the field of diabetes. The new diabetes centre expects to treat 13,000 diabetes patients per year.

The beautiful new diabetes hospital was designed by Vilhelm Lauritzen Arkitekter and Mikkelsen Arkitekter. The architecture supports the vision for Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen as Northern Europe’s largest and most modern diabetes centre, offering world-class patient treatment and research.

It has been important that the architecture should be health-promoting, so it feels like stepping into a large and different landscape when you visit the Steno Center. The building and the beautiful architect designed landscape outside are closely woven together and create a stimulating whole that creates cohesion and wholeness that at the same time invites movement. The common area is designed for patients, relatives and staff. The area’s activities are organized around smaller local squares, each of which forms the framework for the centre’s central themes: diet, exercise and new knowledge.

Steno Diabetes Center is built with the changing of the seasons in mind, with the large window surfaces that create a fine and beautiful contact with the varying and changing landscape outside as the year progresses. In winter, the snow will create a contrast to the building’s warm interior. And in the summer, the changing colour play of the planting will give the building an experience-rich and diverse interior.

The house aims for the hospital feeling to be absent as far as possible, and for natural materials to dominate – wooden floors, wooden ceilings and green courtyards, which almost seep into the building, supporting a well-functioning indoor climate, a material quality, homely texture and Nordic atmosphere. All with the aim of increasing patients’ desire to stay at the Steno Center and learn about possible lifestyle changes, expand their network and continue their treatment.

Hudevad has supplied the radiators for the entire building, where one of the purposes has been to prevent cold drafts from the large window surfaces while at the same time maintain a view of nature outside. For this, Integral Lowline without convectors has been used to make cleaning easy, ensure a high level of hygiene and at the same time maintain an unobstructed view. In corridor areas, Integral Horizontal has been used built into niches, painted in the same colour as the walls to create a sense of wholeness, symmetry and spaciousness.