Laufen
RICOLA HEADQUARTERS
Project 1997Construction 1998–1999
The new building is located in the middle of a group of small-scale village like buildings without any remarkable architectural qualities. However surrounding gardens, however, with their hedges and trees, offer a wonderful environment for a transparent architecture relating to the inside and outside space.
Instead of a multistory volume that would dominate the architectural landscape, we chose a low polygonal installation that fits into Ricola’s garden area like a pavilion. We wanted an architecture in which outer form and geometry did not immediately reveal themselves. One which, thanks to its turned-back façades, dissolves into single pieces. Each piece has the distinct characteristic of either surrounding, reflecting or projecting far into the building’s interior a special view into the garden.
The deep cantilevered roof can be understood as a symbol for the strategy utilized here of melding nature and architecture. Roof beams are made of a special plastic having variable give for assimilation to changing temperatures and the changing weight of rain or snow. Plants, woven among the beams, form a hybrid natural-artificial construction which lends the building an ever-changing appearance in accordance with the passing seasons. Ivy provides for basic green throughout the year between the beams. The leaves of other plants – wild wine, for example – are only visible during the summer months and help to prevent too much sun from penetrating the glass façades.
Inside, the building is planned as a single, cohesive, open space that offers, for the most part, a transparent office landscape on two floors. The large staircase in the middle of the building is simultaneously a connecting element, meeting place, and auditorium. The building is equipped with façades of pure glass throughout, with a few wall-height sliding doors. Thus actual spatial delineation is not static and may be changed according to need. Curtains mounted on three parallel runners allow users differing variables as to color, transparency, and view.
Like its landscape design, the building’s textile equipment is indivisibly bound to its architectural concept. In no way is it a more or less coincidental decorative element. Its conception demanded early and close cooperation with the landscape architect Kienast Vogt and with artists Rosmarie Trockel and Adrian Schiess.
The new marketing building is the third important work by Herzog & de Meuron for Ricola. Both previous buildings, a warehouse in Laufen (1986) and a production building in Mulhouse-Brunnstatt (1993) found worldwide acclaim in architectural circles. In the new glass marketing building, plants and constructional elements are conjoined in a new way to create the architectural background for a very open building type for office spaces intended to improve and facilitate spontaneous internal communication. Both landscape architecture and artists’ cooperation are important components in the architects’ design strategy.
Herzog & de Meuron, 1999
After the automated lozenge warehouse in Laufen and the factory in Mulhouse, the Ricola marketing offices, again in Laufen, are the latest chapter in the collaborations of the studio with this herbal throat lozenge company. In an anonymous context marked by low constructions and small scale allotment gardens, the new administration facilities are installed in an architecture that extends outwards reacting to the incidents in the immediate surroundings to produce the shape of the ground plan. As if they were a pavilion in the Ricola garden, the offices are hidden behind a split container that fragments the volume into partial views and characterizes the open spaces which surround the project. These open areas were commissioned from the Swiss landscaping team headed by the recently deceased Dieter Kienast.
In an attempt to redefine the interior-exterior relationships, the vegetation is used as part of the construction material in this project. The roof garden is extended as an eave formed by a network of strained projecting rods that hold up the vegetation. Fibreglass – the tough, flexible material used by pole-vaulters – was chosen for the support elements which flex in different ways with the changing load and overhang conditions. The top of the pavilion is finished in evergreen ivy while the frontal protection against excess sunlight in summer is confined to additional plantations of Boston ivy. The organic finishes help to define the facade of the building as a skin in constant change.
The interior is a continuous, uninterrupted environment that permits the organization of the workspace into either an office landscape or individual compartmentalized rooms. In the centre of the floor, a broad, straight stairway acts as more than a mere link between two levels: it fulfils the conditions for use as a meeting place or a projection room thanks to the white wall which runs the full height of the two storey void opposite. Collaboration with the artists Rosemarie Trockel and Adrian Schiess has produced a new nuance to the exterior-interior relationship. Three lengths of curtaining accompany the curtain-wall itinerary, providing the opportunity to change the color, the light and the degree of transparency of the entire perimeter. This play of veils and transparencies makes the building behave like a cell that regulates the intensity of its relationships with the surrounding environment through its outer membrane.
