GLASS&SEALEDUNITS
Smart façade for
innovation campus
To create a new basis for collaboration with
customers, startups and partners from science
and industry, Uzwil-based technology group
Bühler built a groundbreaking innovation
campus. The façade is just as technologically
sophisticated as the smart building concept
– the electronically tintable all-glass façade
made of SageGlass provides solar protection,
allowing a previously unattainable level
of openness and transparency in design,
contributing to the building’s unique aesthetic.
» THE BÜHLER AG INNOVATION
campus consists of two elements: the CUBIC
innovation building and the adjoining
application centers, which were modernized
at the same as the new building. The new
campus for the Swiss technology group,
which provides leading process solutions in
the food, feed and mobility markets, brings
together research, development, prototyping,
engineering, production and education. The
aim is to transform the pressing challenges
faced in an era of healthy eating and clean
mobility into new solutions and business.
STATE-OF-THE-ART
OFFICE DESIGN
The three-story steel frame construction of
the CUBIC building appears to float above
the modernized test halls. The construction
rests on a two-part entrance core with
connecting bridges to the high-rise buildings
and the customer center. The upper floors
are supported by a steel catching table. All
the supporting elements, stairways, elevators
and technology in the building concentrate
on three concrete cores, which, together with
the three courtyards and three double-story
halls, form the core of the building. Around
this core, open office environments span two
floors, providing maximum flexibility and full
contact with the communal areas in the center
of the CUBIC building.
With its industrial atmosphere, the
workshop effect was chosen deliberately: the
CUBIC building is a space for collaborative
research and development, a state-of-theart
co-working space for the project teams
of the Bühler staff, startups, customers,
industry partners and university teams. For
the floor plan, architect Carlos Martinez drew
inspiration from the image of a centrifuge: the
ideas developed collaboratively in the core are
“catapulted” into the outer office areas, where
they are fleshed out by small and large work
units. The results are then taken back into the
auditoriums in the center for presentation,
so that they can be tested on prototypes and
models in the “maker space” at a later stage,
before receiving the finishing touches in the
ring of offices.
58 » AUG 2020 » CLEARVIEW-UK.COM