The Building of the Year award is the most prestigious honour in the built environment sector, highlighting examples of the industry’s finest achievements during the year in terms of quality, project collaboration, finances and design. Among the 20 nominated projects, the victory clearly went to Karolinska Institutet’s new Biomedicum research lab.

The jury’s verdict:
“The winner of the 2019 Building of the Year award has succeeded with a complex and comprehensive project. The project group has successfully implemented an ambitious agenda regarding its approach to collaboration, the atmosphere on the job and putting safety first. Moreover, the project was completed ahead of schedule and substantially below budget.”

“We are incredibly proud that Biomedicum has been designated Building of the Year. The objective has been to create a unique gathering point for interdisciplinary research and collaboration. This award confirms that our working methods have been successful, generating the ideal balance between finances, time and quality through outstanding collaboration with all involved parties,” says Hayar Gohary, project manager at Akademiska Hus.



Biomedicum is one of the largest research labs in Europe with room for up to 1,600 researchers and other personnel at Karolinska Institutet. The eleven-floor building is equipped with the latest technology to facilitate world-leading experimental research. Biomedicum will promote interaction, new collaborations and the exchange of experiences, ideas and techniques across borders now that several scientific disciplines are gathered under one roof for the first time. This construction project is the largest ever undertaken by Akademiska Hus.

“Naturally we are extremely pleased and proud of this award. Biomedicum is Karolinska Institutet’s largest construction project ever and a flagship for experimental basic research on health and disease – in Sweden and internationally. Biomedicum provides Karolinska Institutet with optimum conditions for successful, world-class research and has been created to promote and facilitate creative meetings and collaborative efforts between researchers and different departments. This is an important long-term investment for Karolinska Institutet and for Swedish research in general,” says Rikard Becker, facilities director at Karolinska Institutet.

This is the second time that a building built by Akademiska Hus has won the Building of the Year prize. In 2014 the prize went to Aula Medica – another building that the property company built for Karolinska Institutet and a neighbour of Biomedicum on the Solna Campus.

Facts about Biomedicum