Chipperfield Building Novartis Campus Basel
Images 1–4: Ulrich Schwarz, Berlin
The Chipperfield Building, a laboratory and office building on the Novartis Campus in Basel, has a rectangular floor plan 55 m long and 30 m wide.
Two cores and a series of facade columns form the vertical load-bearing elements. A system of post-tensioned girders placed between the cores enables a column-free floor zone 27 m long and 30 m wide across five stories.
The facade is part of the load-bearing structure and consists of prefabricated concrete columns and beams. Crushed marble was used as an aggregate. The cores are dimensioned to absorb the forces caused by seismic impacts. The structure thus meets the requirements for a Building Class II object located in the seismically highly demanding earthquake zone 3a.