History
Designed and built by Preiswerk of Basel in 1974, Bau 74 was the first building of Hoffman-La Roche to deviate from the Bauhaus style buildings on site with grays, browns and reds the colour of choice instead of the stark white and glass preferred by Otto Rudolf Salvisberg with his original 1936 Bau 1 (since demolished a replaced with a new Bau 1). The building has been used primarily as office space, with marketing, engineering and other functions residing here during this time. The building also housed a multi-level underground car-park, Travel bureau, IT servers (now relocated offsite and in the cloud), post office, site security and various restaurants.
In 2000, the firm Ima Huber AG renovated the open office space from the sweeping lines seen in the archive photos below to the more rigid square structures that office cubicles are these days more renowned for.
In 2014, Roche announced site development plans to demolish Bau 74 and neighbouring Bau 49 to make way for the Roche Innovation Centre (Basel) which will see 1500 scientists move into the space occupied by these buildings. You can view Bau 74 & 49 being demolished (0:56) and then re-built with Baus 4, 5, 6 & 7 (1:41) at this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQTl-uI3YfU. On 31st October 2017, the building was officially closed and demolition work began 1st November 2017.
Special thanks to the Roche Archives for the photographs from the 1970s.
The Photos
** Apologies, but I realised after posting that I forgot to straighten a few shots in post. Oops!
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