On Building an Academic Town in a Multiversity

Inaugurated in 1979 as a kind of academic town with indoor, glass-roofed streets, the first construction stage of the structuralist campus Dragvoll University Centre is investigated as a spatial and organisational solution for the new University of Trondheim. Drawing from 1960s and 1970s discourses on campus architecture and campus development—internationally, nationally, and locally—this article investigates how the interacting planning processes of Dragvoll and the University of Trondheim formed the basis for a multiversity within the frameworks of the structuralist campus and reform university. In the 1960s and 1970s, key actors in Trondheim discussed both how to uphold the semi-autonomy of established academic institutions and how to build a joint campus at Dragvoll for the entire university. Important in this ambivalent discussion were the uses of the concepts of academic community and built environment. This article deals with how key actors in Trondheim used these concepts, for example when investigating solutions to the problems of alienating, mammoth institutions in modern society, but also as a way of connecting the semi-autonomous institutions in a multiversity.