Beil, Switzerland
Located in Biel/Bienne, the heart of Swiss watchmaking, the Omega and Swatch Headquarters, developed by Shigeru Ban and Itten+Brechbühl, is a building complex that creates a consolidated campus and visitor center that incorporates exhibition galleries, public plazas, and a riverside hiking trail.
The Omega and Swatch Headquarters project has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
As the architect has stated, the buildings were inspired by “freedom and joyfulness for Swatch, precision, accuracy, and quality for Omega factory, and the integration of both Swatch and Omega personalities in Cité du Temps, the Swatch Group building.”
“I wanted to design something very special and particularly appropriate for this city,” explains Shigeru Ban at the project launch.
“I know that Biel is very famous for its timber technologies – they have the most advanced timber institution.”
The aim of Shigeru Ban was to give all three buildings something in common which is related to the local context of the site.
So the optimum choice in these two aspects was wood.
From the construction point of view, it is the best structural material because of its high precision which allows an extremely quick and quiet erection process, and above all, wood is the only renewable structural material.
From a contextual point of view, wood was also the only choice because Biel/Bienne is known for its timber engineering school which leads the timber technology in Switzerland.
Using the engineering technologies of a nearby timber institution, each of the new structures will be built with a solid timber frame.
Pillar and beam constructions will be used for a museum building and Omega production hall, while the Swatch headquarters building will feature an undulating timber gridshell.
In fact, the structural prototype of Center Pompidou Metz which is one of Shigeru Ban Architects’ representative works was done in Biel/Bienne.
The entire volume of timber used in this project is 4,600m³ which corresponds to 10 hours of growth of entire trees in Switzerland.
Project: Omega and Swatch Headquarters
Architects: Shigeru Ban Architects
Lead Architect: Shigeru Ban
Associate Architects: Itten+Brechbühl AG
General Contractor: Blumer-Lehmann AG
Client: Hayek Engineering
Photographers: Didier Boy de la Tour and Philippe Zinniker
