Maersk Tower

Copenhagen university

Well, I think, that you have all heard about Copenhagen university orKøbenhavns Universitet in Danishand is one of the oldest universities in Europe. In fact, it’s the second oldest university in Scandinavia, founded in 1479. The university has six faculties, one of which is the faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, for which the Maersk Tower was built, as we may say.

I was pretty lucky to be there in Copenhagen faculty of Health and Medical Sciences in summer, because this Maersk Tower had just been opened officially on January 19, 2017, so that the building was just new and it was an honor to be there as an international summer school student in this very modern building of the university there.

“Building that embraces all aspects of research” as Wewer says, is a pretty true thing about this building. It’s not just a building for students, it’s a building for the professors and researchers and everyone, mainly, who want to have a thing or two done while they are still alive and breathing. This building allows them to use high technology laboratories and technic to research and analyze and interpret and discover new things in this world.

Maersk Tower

So, this panum building for the faculty of Health and Medical Sciences is located at Blegdamsvej streetand it just nearby the Niels Bohr institute, which is a very nice place and a very good one to visit and sightsee, though, I guess, it’s not really considered for sightseeing, as the students study there and the doors can be opened with the cards only. And, besides, there was this construction going on while me being there in Copenhagen and the site was kind of not very beautiful, however, they were doing these lightning things, which were very fascinating at night, when they used to light the building.

Anyways, this whole new building for the university was being built from 2012, if I remember correctly. Well, the competition for the design was announced in 2010 and then the site was set in 2012 as I know. so that, the building process has not been short and it was being built for a pretty long time, though the time was worth it, because when you enter the building, it’s the whole new world for the students and professors and everyone and the interior is pretty wonderful, too.

The tower

So, the building is made from copper shutters, which move in accordance with the sun and so that they reduce the energy consumption for cooling. They are kind of brown and they will need many years to turn green, I mean, for the copper to turn green.

There are many glasses and windows in the tower, so that the halls and rooms in there are pretty light and the area around is visible. And it’s especially awesome if you are on the top of the tower, of course.

The building connects Nørre Allé and Blegdamsvej in Nørrebro. There are those “floating walkways”between them and it’s a very nice thing there. It’s like a zigzag above parts of the tower. So that, the building gets some unique expression. And it is a triangular shaped.

So, there are 15 floors in all, we can say.

The ground floor is for the canteen and classrooms and auditoriums and that’s the place, where we had those lectures of internal medicine.

Floors 2 and 3 are for healthy aging and research about getting old. Well, you will agree with me, that nowadays the old age is growing and there are many people of older ages than ever and with that thing, the diseases and being sick is becoming more and more frequent and it’s important to find ways to healthy aging and not struggling of many diseases that people struggle with when they get old.

Floors  4 and 5are the department of neuroscience. This is a very interesting and difficult field, of course, and there are many researches to be done here.

Floors 6 to 8 are for the metabolism research, such as for diabetes type 2 and stuff like that about obesity. Nowadays many people have diabetes mellitus or are obese and can’t handle these things and even more and more people get diabetes. People are eager to find a cure for that and it’s a very important thing to research, of course.

Floor 9 is the department of biomedical sciences for cardiac rhythm disorders research. Cardiac problems are number one in the whole world, so that we really need to get better knowledge about these things.

Floor 10 is the department of cellular and molecular medicine.Our organisms are made up of these things and every process in our bodies comes down to the cells and molecules and , first, we must know everything about these things and then we can understand the other stuff about organs and organ systems.

Floors 11 to 14 are the department of immunology and microbiology and they conduct many researches there as the spectrum is very wide.

Floor 15 is for the conferences and stuff like that and there’s one of the best views of the city of Copenhagen!

Guided tours in Maersk Tower

It took me by  the surprise to get to know, that you could book a guided tour in the Maersk Tower. Well, this thing had been announced in September the 1-st, so that I wouldn’t know about that, when I was there.

As it’s said, you can have guided tours on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 16:45 to 18:00, which is not a very short time for having a tour.

The price ranges from 60 to 120 Danish Kroners. It’s 120 DKK for adults and 90 DKK for seniors and students and 60 DKK for children.

You can also have some group tours, which cost 2 500 DKKper tour and the maximum amount of people are 25.

So , the tour lasts for one hour and 15 minutes and the visitors are asked to arrive 10 minutes before the tour starts. The meeting point is near the reception in the main entrance of the Maersk Tower. There’s this revolving door, and when you enter it, there’s the reception on your right side.

Within the tour you will see all the floors of the Maersk Tower and visit the laboratories and see the hallways with all their splendid walls and study places and so on. So, I guess, it’s worth booking a guided tour, especially if you are interested in medicine or research about it.

We were lucky, because we didn’t really need a guided tour there, because we could have access to their facilities there, and, besides, we got a tour from Kathrine and people there, so that it was not necessary to have any guided tours booked, and, besides, they didn’t have those guided tours then in the summer.

I must say, that the building itself didn’t seem very confusing, however, getting out from the building was kind of a problem with some of us, after being on the top floor with other students and staff members. We went down with the elevator, however, then we couldn’t understand where we had to go, because there was no exit sign around. In fact, there were exit signs, but they all went to the balcony or somewhere else and that was not the road that we went through  while getting up on the top. It was also very interesting, that the doors were on sensors and if I went nearby them, they would open and some time later it just got pretty bothering, because I didn’t intend to go through those doors and they just kept opening and closing! Well, that was a pretty surprising thing for me, because we don’t have such doors in Georgia, especially in the universities and, I think, that it’s a really good idea to have such doors in places like that, I mean, in the public places, because nobody ever bothers to close the doors after they open them, so that they are pretty much always open and that’s not a good thing for the facility or for the people inside there, especially if it’s cold and if it’s winter. And it is always a very cold winter in Georgia and they always need too much effort to keep the buildings warm during that time, while people just enter the buildings and they don’t really close the doors, so that it needs more energy for the buildings to be kept warm inside.

Anyways, Maersk Tower is one of the university buildings, that people should really visit, especially if they are students or researchers or interested in such things, because the laboratories there and the facilities are of world class and very modern and worth seeing!

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