above of le locle, at the street to france is next to the existing buildings of johnson & johnson (cb-1 and cb-2) is a big area with a steep declivity. that’s the area where johnson & johnson likes to centralize several locations and wants to create a center for production and administration.

there is a design plan existing for that area. addi-tionally, the municipality requested that building should take place at the border of that wide area for optimal utilization. on the other hand, johnson & johnson requested to place the producton on the 1st floor.

the solution

due to the optimal integration at the south of that area mühlemann + partner was able to fulfill sev-eral requests: firstly, to stay far away of the living area in the north to prevent problems with noise emissions. secondly, the steep declivity could be used for the concept of the building and a direct connection from the main road to the company ground of johnson & johnson could be realized.

as usual mühlemann +partner paid attention to the request of flexibility and extensibility of the planned building. this needed to be proved during the work of the feasibility study: the need of the building owner for additional space had to be in-cluded two times.

the production space could be places at the north west of the area. due to special static installations on the roof it was possible to create a layout with-out pillars for 30 meters of width. the complete technology was integrated in a bus of that roof construction. the valorization of the production space happened from the outside. this concept also eases the extension of the building because the installations on the roof can be pushed along without problems. the architecture of the building was kept with a filigree structure to respect the environment. the green roofs are keeping the building light and the walls of aluminum are inte-grated into the environment perfectly. photovolta-ic-panels can easlily be installed on the roof of the building for an environmental-protecting power supply.

for the offices the given area form will be used and the five-floor building will be integrated into the hillside. that leads to a optimal integration into the countryside. a complete glass front to the south underlines the high-tech character of the company and creates bright and high-value working space. offices and production are connected by a joint.$

that centralization also creates new demand for additional parking space. with the usage of the area form the parking could be realized under-earth with 196 parking slots. when needed the space can be doubled. thus, the demand of the municipality to minimize the number of external parking slots could be answered.

integrated into the office area of the building was the employee restaurant, that has to be able to feed up to 1’000 persons. additionally, a big room for stuff meetings had to be created. furthermore, an exit to the outdoor installations with a small lake and recovering places was implemented, which enlarges the quality of work at johnson & johnson additionally.

the two production and administrations buildings  with storage (cb-2) that are on the other side of the street were connected to the cb-3 with a gangway for goods transportation and passenger traffic. as an option the project also included also included a gangway between cb-1 and cb-2.

the traffic concept enables a direct connection from the main street to the company ground. the stuff has an own access road with an own en-trance at the south-east. guest and customers are provided a parking and an entrance in the south-west. this divide had been requested by the build-ing owner because of security reasons. the separation into two streams – one to the chemin blanc and one with a new access road directly to the cb-3 – prevents a too high load on the knot of the main street.