The Novartis Pavillon is located within a park on the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland. It is designed as a place of encounter and learning about life sciences, hosting “Wonders of Medicine”, a permanent multimedia exhibition, as well as meeting spaces and a café. For the first time in its history, Novartis created a building intended primarily for the general public. The Novartis Pavillon is an important part of an opening process to make the Novartis Campus accessible to the community.

Our brief was to design and develop a communicative skin for the pavilion in collaboration with the architects and the client. The circular building has a height of 14 metres and a diameter of 42 metres.

Our idea was to combine organic photovoltaics and LED technology to create a zero-energy media facade. This means that the total amount of energy consumed by the facade over a year is (at least) equal to the amount of energy it produces itself. The media facade is designed to offer Novartis a unique communication medium to enter into a dialogue with the public and with its urban surroundings.

Through a series of design iterations, prototypes and tests we realised a media facade that features a total of 10,000 diamond-shaped organic solar modules with 30,000 embedded LEDs.

Organic solar modules can be manufactured in a variety of shapes and sizes, are flexible and extremely light sensitive, making them ideal for use on a curved structure. Since they are also semi-transparent, the light from the LEDs shines not only over, but also through the building skin, giving the viewer the impression of a dynamic, almost living and breathing organism.

Three international artists collaborated with scientists from Novartis to develop artworks inspired by the shapes and colours of cells and molecules, as well as the themes of sustainability and the convergence of art and science. Every day after sunset, these works are shown on the facade, while during the day, the facade displays moving text.

The zero-energy media facade turns the Novartis Pavillon into a luminous icon that is visible from many locations in Basel. It is a communicative skin that acts as an interface between inside and outside, the company and the city, and promotes the Novartis Pavillon as a place of exchange and learning. In this way, the facade becomes a symbol of Novartis' openness to enter into a dialogue with the public, bringing the world of science and medicine closer to the community. By combining organic photovoltaics and LEDs, it consumes only as much electrical energy as it can produce.