Swatch Omega SO51

The new headquarters of Swatch AG is to be built on the former 'Gygax site' in Biel and new production buildings for Omega AG on the historic Omega site. Both companies are subsidiaries of Swatch Group Ltd. The team Shigeru Ban Architects with Blaser Architekten AG as local architect, Hermann Blumer dipl. Ing. ETH as timber construction engineer, Transsolar Klima Engineering as energy consultant and Fontana Landschaftsarchitektur emerged as the winner of an invited architectural competition.

The design by Shigeru Ban interprets the competition specifications as follows: The proposed new buildings represent the unity and identity of the sites through the choice of materials and building concepts. The classically precise volumes of Omega are contrasted with the organically playful body of the Swatch building. However, all of the new buildings have contemporary energy technology in common and will be constructed in timber. The central head building planned for both companies leaves space for the existing old buildings, forms the Omega Plaza together with them and leads spatially to the Nikolas Hayek Plaza and the main entrance to the new Swatch site. The three new Swatch AG buildings envisaged in the competition programme are combined to form an elongated volume that connects to the Omega site via Hayek Plaza.

The car park will be laid out on both sides of the site along a central longitudinal axis. This will shorten the access routes for the two companies, clarify general orientation on the site and make the overall space easier to understand.