WOODCHIPS
PHOTOS: Didier Boy de la Tour
SWATCH OMEGA HEADQUARTERS BY SHIGERU BAN Nominated for the 2020 International Award for Wood Architecture Pritzker laureate and wood champion Shigeru Ban is not a surprising nominee for the third annual International Award for Wood Architecture, which will be announced this summer. Located in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, the Swatch and Omega Campus – completed by Ban’s eponymous firm last year – covers 503,514 sq.ft., which makes it one of the largest hybrid mass timber projects in the world. The Swatch Headquarters building features a curved gridshell roof consisting of 7,700 perfectly fitted timber pieces, while the Omega Factory is a rectilinear structure. Cité du Temps, a 8
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museum and conference hall, acts as an interface between Swatch and Omega, both figuratively and physically; the building intersects with the Swatch Headquarters’ canopy. The roofs of all three buildings are equipped with photovoltaic panels, and state-of-the-art heating and cooling achieve low energy consumption. Most notable, however, is the intricate freeform lattice shell, which spans more than 787 ft. long. Among the three structures, 162,000 cu.ft. of Swiss spruce were used – equivalent to approximately 10 hours of growth in the country’s abundant forests. shigerubanarchitects.com
