Saguez & Partners Turn to Biophilic Design to Create a Welcoming Office for a Pharmaceutical Company

2021 Best of Year winner for Midsize Corporate Office

Though a world leader in the research and development of drugs and pharmaceuticals, Roche Laboratories and its long-time design firm Saguez & Partners embraced biophilia as the salient factor for the renovation of the company’s headquarters outside of Paris in the L’Angle building by Viguier. Together, they considered tenets of well-being, natural elements, and living organisms as ideal complements to Roche’s return-to-the-office and, with it, newly collaborative ways of working. Thus, the 11,000-square-foot workplace is daylight-filled, calm in color palette, and, naturally, filled with greenery, real and otherwise. Regarding the latter, abstract watercolor landscapes painted on pillars act as way-finding devices while a digital piece at reception by Turkish-American artist Refik Anadol is a harbinger of the overall inspirational environment to unfold.

Given Roche’s efforts in research and development with the attendant emphasis on information sharing, the company opted to have 55 percent of the HQ designated as collaborative with built-in flexibility. In fact, the top floor has entirely reconfigurable workstations. Down below, two plazalike areas with stadium stairs are aptly named Atrium and Agora. With long communal tables in one and powder-blue ottomans peppering the other, they proclaim the current office a welcoming place to reconnect.

Saguez & Partners: Olivier Saguez; Pierre-Olivier Pigeot; Jean-Philippe Cordina; Claire Cieslak; Manon Gagelin; Laurent Brudner; André Lavergne