When HDR provided Roche with a master plan for its Shanghai site, the company needed a “heart” for its complex in the form of offices and a training centre that brought scattered facilities together into one. Our team was asked to deliver a contemporary building that fits with Roche’s corporate values while complementing Chinese culture. We responded with the design of an iconic building for Roche using modern materials and technologies, as well as implementing sustainable design principles.

With thousands of employees across the country, the training centre at the Shanghai site can accommodate 300 people at any time, consolidating programs that were held on different off-site locations which called for added travel and costs.

There are also 350 offices in the building for groups like product development, strategic planning and commercial excellence, establishing the site as a third strategic site along with Basel, Switzerland and San Francisco.

The five-level building is located at the northeast corner of the campus. Three options were developed to help shape and define the vision in keeping with the "Rationale for Conceptual Design Solutions." Our rationale included:

• Creating an iconic image
• Contemporary design
• Flexibility
• Sustainable design and energy efficiency
• Rational functional design
• Quality and schedule

To meet this rationale, our team worked to design simple forms that evoke a strong contextual image with a grand stairway and connectivity between floors to create vertical and horizontal interaction. The “heart” of the campus is evoked in a central location that provides a meeting point surrounded by a landscape that serves the entire complex and connects zones.

The offices and training centre were part of the full master plan of the Shanghai site that HDR provided to Roche, which was a comprehensive approach to developing the site in stages, ensuring uninterrupted operations on campus. The plan also included strategies to establish new pharmaceutical research and early development and research and development facilities, expanding production capabilities and recommendations for incrementally expanding infrastructure to accommodate these new additions.