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Niels Bohr Building — From the outside, it has looked finished for years. But the housewarming had to wait until October of 2024, with the building now finally ready after an eight-year delay and a budget overrun of more than DKK 3 billion.
On Tuesday 29 October it was finally time to inaugurate the Niels Bohr Building at the University of Copenhagen.
King Frederik was invited to cut the ceremonial ribbon signifying the end of a construction process that— as chairman Merete Eldrup put it with mild understatement — has been »long and a little complicated«.
The new 52,000 square metres building will house three University of Copenhagen (UCPH) departments (the Niels Bohr Institute, the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Science Education), and be the home campus of 3,000 students, researchers and administrative staff.
So far, about half of the new building has been taken into use. The Department of Science Education has moved in, and the Niels Bohr Institute is in the process of moving, and is expected to be finished in 2025. The Department of Chemistry will not move in until 2025.
So far, it is primarily office areas that have been used, while the laboratories are still empty.
The construction of the new building was started by the Danish Building and Property Agency in 2013 with an original budget of DKK 1.6 billion.
The University of Copenhagen was supposed to take over the building in 2016. But due to technical problems the unfinished and scandal-ridden construction was transferred to another government agency, the Danish Road Directorate in 2018.
An evaluation report prepared by the Danish Road Directorate in June 2024 showed that the total cost of the construction has run up to DKK 5.2 billion.
The University of Copenhagen is not the owner of the new building. And with the budget overruns, the university runs the risk of having to pay significantly more in rent than originally planned. The previous Social Democrat government has, in a previously confidential document from May 2022, promised that if the increase in rent makes UCPH finances unsustainable, »the government will seek support to address the issue.«
A number of arbitration cases are currently underway concerning the construction. The largest of the cases is against the Spanish construction company Inabensa, for which a DKK 1.2 billion claim for damages has been filed. The Spanish company has gone bankrupt however.