The Roche Tower is to be the highest tower in Switzerland, Roche is a global health-care company, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. This design by world-famous swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron is to redevelop the Roche Basel headquarters campus. The architects studio of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron is based in Basel.
The Roche Tower will be around 163m tall, previously designed to be 180m high, and have 40 storeys.
The redevelopment of the Roche campus is expected to cost an estimated $640m (CHF800m) and will include two buildings by Herzog & De Meuron (the tower and an R&D laboratory). The Roche Tower will consolidate 2,400 Roche workplaces that are currently spread out over the city.
Building 1 will have a gross floor area of 75,000m² (246,063ft²), and will be constructed on the southern perimeter of the site (between the Rhine and Grenzacherstrasse). The tower (building 1) could be completed in 2011.
Roche employs over 70,000 people in 150 countries. The Basel workforce of over 2,000 people are currently located across various sites. In the past few years Roche has created around 1,000 jobs in Basel and the new headquarters will allow further expansion. The Roche Tower is two and half times taller than any other building Roche has built. The Roche Tower has been nicknamed ‘Wrapped Tree’.
The Roche Tower includes a spiral of stepped cubic blocks (pyramid-like) rising up inside the form of a double helix moving in opposite directions.
Building 97 on the northern perimeter of Roche will be a new research and development facility that will replace an older facility between Grenzacherstrasse and Wettsteinallee.