2022 the Novartis Campus has been open to the public. Since the merger of the two chemical giants Ciba Geigy and Sandoz 25 years ago, the development of the twenty-hectare site into a research centre has progressed. According to the masterplan by urban planner Vittorio Lampugnani, an introverted working environment has been created in the north-west of the city. Behind a fence and between several existing buildings fifteen masterpieces, exclusively accessible to employees, were designed by internationally renowned architects. Some of the highlights, such as the Forum 3 by Diener + Diener Architekten or the laboratory building by SANAA, were positioned at the edge of the site so that we could show them from the outside and include them in our guided tours. It was only with the high-rise building by Herzog & de Meuron, the Asklepios 8, which the architects placed on the newly designed banks of the Rhine and at the farthest corner of the campus, that an opening of the site seemed to emerge. At the latest after the pandemic and the opening of the Novartis Pavilion by Michele de Lucchi, this opening was the new concept for Novartis. Today, the global headquarters with 8,000 employees is a place of knowledge, but also of encounters and interaction.
Landscape architects such as Vogt or PWP from California have left a legacy on the campus that is just as desirable and previously inaccessible as the star architects Frank O. Gehry, Tadao Ando or David Chipperfield.
