Swiss studio Christ & Gantenbein has created the Multifunctional Workspace Building for pharmaceutical giant Roche that aims to offer more freedom and flexibility than a traditional office.
As the name suggests, the 10,000-square-metre Multifunctional Workspace Building serves a mix of uses, ranging from gatherings of more than 500 people to focused individual work or group collaborations.
It is the third building that Christ & Gantenbein has designed for Roche's campus in the German town of Grenzach-Wyhlen, near the Swiss border.
The Multifunctional Workspace Building facilitates both focused individual work and collaboration
This approach fuelled the design of both architecture and furniture. Some elements are designed with privacy in mind, while others have been developed to encourage openness and interaction, but everything is flexible. At a time when more people than ever have been working from home, largely due to the pandemic, the architecture firm hopes the building will be "quite simply, a reason to come to work".
"We want to provide a space for what cannot be done remotely," said studio co-founder Emanuel Christ.
"We want to equip a workspace with personality, diversity, freedom, and flexibility in order to provide a positive experience for Roche's employees and invite the local community to participate."
Glazed corners reveal staircases in the building's four corners
Column-free floor plates were essential to creating the lev...