This article was originally published on Domus 1070, July-August 2022.
By autumn 2022, the Novartis Campus in Basel will open its outdoor areas and many of its services that until now have been closed to the public – restaurants, a pharmacy and a post office – in a decision that could have a significant impact on how the Swiss city “functions”. More in general, this is a virtuous development in the recent history of redefining the confines between the public and private city, centred on its uses more than its ownership structure.
In recent years, this trend has concerned most of the world, and not only in the West. The completion of the Novartis Pavilion by Michele De Lucchi is an important step in the process of re-signifying the pharmaceutical company’s campus enclosure as a genuine part of the urban fabric. De Lucchi, who won the international competition coordinated in 2017 by Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, conceived a simple circular volume with an exterior diameter of 42 metres and a continuous gable roof.
The building is suitably located at the point of greatest accessibility and visual impact, nestled in the nature of the Park Süd, flanked by the Rhine and stretching towards the city centre. The interiors are spread over two levels: the ground floor hosts a cafe, an event centre and a learning area, while the mezzanine offers a display space of 900 square metres, installed by Atelier Brückner with the permanent exhibition “Wonders of Medicine”, through which Novartis aims “to encourage reflection on topics such as the human body, health, opportunities and challenges in healthcare, and the role of pharmaceutical companies in the development of medicines and innovative therapies.”
The pavilion’s typology, which combines the architecture’s ambition of site-specificity with the structure’s essentially self-contained character, is particularly fitting for a multifaceted architect like De Lucchi. As with his previous experiments on this theme – including the UniCredit Pavilion, the Pavilion Zero and the Intesa Sanpaolo Pavilion, all in Milan and all from 2015 – for the Novartis Pavilion, too, the envelope is the element that required the greatest conceptual and aesthetic effort. As a whole, these buildings constitute an eclectic and coherent catalogue of facade solutions, poised between naturalism, a fascination for soft-tech, the rough and reassuring materiality of wood and more abstract contemporary surfaces.
A wooden frame is wrapped in a metal shell and semi-integral cladding with 10,000 organic photovoltaic cells – based on carbon rather than silicone – which rises up from the entirely glazed ground floor. A total of 30,000 LEDs are embedded in the cells, facing outwards and towards the underlying sheet metal, thereby increasing the luminosity and reflections. This solution aims to join rationality with exuberance, and efficiency with architectural expression. On the one hand, the facade produces the energy needed to function; on the other, this programmable shimmering “skin” becomes a canvas for informative messages and artistic animations, as well as being a shining diaphragm that, at night-time transforms the pavilion into a friendly and highly visible beacon of light.