A mind-boggling number of parts and pieces clad Shigeru Ban’s new headquarters for Swatch in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. Nearly 2,800 uniquely shaped facade panels cover the more than 100,000-square-foot surface of the building’s free-form timber gridshell.
Although there are three primary cladding-panel types—metal, glass, and ETFE cushions—the tally balloons to nine if one takes into account that some are fixed, some are operable, and many include photovoltaics. In all, there are tens of thousands of components making up the facade.
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