Pill box

Christ & Gantenbein have designed a flexible new office building for the pharmaceutical company Roche, which has now been completed.

With the new “Fritz” office building, the Basel firm Christ & Gantenbein is completing the campus of the pharmaceutical company Roche at the Grenzach site. This is the architects’ third collaboration with Roche. The company’s main aim with the new building was to enable new forms of collaboration with a flexible structure. Here, too, the signs of the times point to “New Work”. Christ & Gantenbein have therefore designed spaces with the greatest possible variability.

In “Fritz”, five floors are stacked on top of each other, spanning the floor area without columns. Concrete cassette ceilings provide the necessary spans. Christ & Gantenbein designed the so-called Forum, a two-storey multifunctional hall with space for up to 550 people, as the center of the building. While the Forum is housed on upper floors 1 and 2, the first floor accommodates the catering facilities. In addition to a restaurant and a bar, the concierge service also offers numerous services here.

For the exterior design, the architects have provided their interpretation of the modern office building: Floor-to-ceiling ribbon windows are structured and rhythmized by narrow templates. Slightly protruding cladding traces the intermediate ceilings. Christ & Gantenbein arranged cross-shaped struts directly behind the window front. This staggered depth not only gives the façade a surprising plasticity, but also an unexpected decorative element.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Christ & Gantenbein did not design the four building ceilings as 90-degree angles. Instead, narrow glass sections are inserted at a 45-degree angle to illuminate the stairwells. In terms of architectural history, this design is immediately reminiscent of building forms from the 1970s and 1980s.

The interior of the building was designed by INCHfurniture from Basel. They created an office landscape that is both versatile and flexible, tailored to agile working. Roche employees can now go about their work in an environment that offers them flexible workstations, creative labs and meeting or silent hubs.

Money instead of pills: The London office ACME has built a remarkable new building in Leipzig for the Sächsische Aufbaubank.