The 16 and 26-story lab towers are part of a four-building pRED complex on Roche’s urban research and development campus in Basel. Buildings 4 through 7 share a common underground garage. Building 4 contains a conference center and Building 5 is all office. Buildings 6 and 7 reviewed here (72m and 114m high, respectively) combine lab and office space. All four pRED buildings are linked at grade with an “Avenue” connector.

The towers are identical in plan except for the different number of lifts. The floors of both towers are divided roughy in half between lab and office functions. Each of the functional halves has its own stair and lift core shares that connect labs on all floors separately from the offices on all floors. Two “ecosystems” - one with lab coats and one without - exist theoretically independently from one another. This works until somebody from the lab area needs to use the bathroom. These are accessible only from the office part.

Both lab and office areas are open space, with some smaller enclosed areas. Groups of three floors are bundled together and connected by a spiral stair to form “neighborhoods,” each accommodating about 140 scientists.

The 16 and 26 story towers have a floor-to-floor height of 4.3m, installation ceiling cavity of 1.05m, yielding a clear room height of 3.25m. Universal lab/office floors do not seem to have a raised floor in the office part. It is not clear how power and data cables reach the computer desks.

Sets of three floors in each tower, connected by a spiral stair, form a “neighborhood” for 140 scientists. Laterally the towers connect by the “Avenue” at grade as well as with a bridge at the top of the shorter tower. The “Avenue”, the bridge and the top floor of the taller tower contain collaborative spaces.

Two underground levels as well as the double-height top floors of both towers serve as technical floors. A four-level parking garage below the underground technical floors connects all four towers.

Load-bearing structure is in-situ concrete with prefabricated columns. The concrete core is pushed against one of the long facades. Structural grid in midspan 10.5m on centers, perimeter grid 7m on centers. Useable span from core to facade 15m. Typical floor to floor height 4.3m.

Centralized, dedicated air supply and exhaust shafts. Two supply shafts on the outer perimeter at each end of the core facing short sides of the floor. Four exhaust shafts facing the usable space. Despite the two towers’ substantial height and air volume difference, shafts appear to be equally sized in both buildings.

Lab and office layouts are based on a 3.4x3.4m module. Each module is prepared for air and media connections. Layouts can be changed by moving the furniture around or adding removable partitions. The boundary of lab and office zone is de facto fixed, predicated on the preinstalled building systems distribution.

Two identical rectangular floor plates mirrored about the back wall of the pushed against the facade cores. Plan diagram implies two equally sized towers.

A case of symmetry at all costs?

The identical twin plans are mirrored along the back side of their cores, creating the impression of a single square plan with a central core split in half—like twins separated at birth. Separate but equal, each twin received its own full core, complete with two egress stairs, shafts, and lifts. The total floor plate area of 1600 m², reduced to 1100 m² of usable space after subtracting the generously sized core, is roughly half the area of a typical Class A office floor plate and much smaller than the usual lab/office combo floors.

These halves were then divided again: lab and office spaces, separated by a partition, each received one-half (or technically one-quarter) of the core. The resulting quarters were too small to accommodate the “neighborhoods” of 140 scientists as specified in the project brief. To meet this requirement, three floors had to be bundled together and connected by stairs to form neighborhoods of the necessary size.

The two towers—one 16 stories high, the other 26—both feature equally large floor plates. Despite the significant difference in the area they serve, their cores are identical in size. While the shorter tower has four fewer lifts, the core size remains unchanged. Similarly, the shafts in the smaller tower, which handle 40% less air, are inexplicably the same size as those in the larger tower.

A mental exercise: What if the design had opted for a single, roughly square tower with a floor plate of about 3200 m² and a single core, rising 20–21 stories? Such a compact configuration could have saved two stairs, several lifts, and significant shaft space. Moreover, eliminating two large exterior facades would have reduced construction costs and energy loss through the building envelope by approximately 30%. Compact buildings are inherently more sustainable, with less envelope area per square meter of usable space. Larger contiguous floor plates could have accommodated the specified neighborhoods on one or, at most, two floors instead of three.

 Another question arises: does the office space require the 1.05 m of unused height above its ceiling, free from lab installations? Office floors typically require at least 1 meter less height than lab floors. Alternating lab and office floors could save at least 1 meter of building height per lab-office pair. Over 20 floors, this would yield a 10-meter reduction, enough to add at least two additional floors. Each 2-floor lab-office “sandwich” could comfortably and flexibly house the 140-scientist neighborhoods specified in the brief.

Towers 72m and 114m high
Construction 2019 - 2024
Reported budget for all four towers with underground levels 1.3 billion USD (2024)
Architect: Herzog de Meuron, Basel