A building kind of like a ‘mille-feuille’: inside Herzog & de Meuron’s home for Lombard Odier

Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron has completed a major new headquarters building for Swiss bank Lombard Odier in the Geneva suburb of Bellevue, overlooking Lake Geneva. Named ‘One Roof’, the building brings together over 2,000 of the company’s staff from disparate sites, accommodating them in a shared hub where design centres on openness and collaboration.

The eight-storey, 170m-long building is characterised by concave glazed façades, wrapped on all sides by terraces. Cantilevered horizontal concrete slabs are balanced by slender metal vertical columns, painted white to create a sense of lightness.

Tour Herzog & de Meuron's ‘One Roof’ for Lombard Odier

The exterior’s visual grid is loosened by dynamic column placements and a gentle rhythm of projecting and pulled-back floor plates – which result in double-height interior spaces and an eye-catching cantilevered terrace swinging out from the building. The pointed corners of the structure recall stretched sails – studio partner Jacques Herzog describes the building's outside as ‘a kind of mille-feuille’, due to its light, layered and slender nature.

‘It’s not a block,’ says Christine Binswanger, Herzog & de Meuron partner in charge of the project, adding that it was important to avoid the sense of a ‘hermetic’ building – achieved by designing wraparound terraces, all accessible from the interior.

Outdoors, an elegant amphitheatre is carved into the landscape, leading down through a double-height glazed wall to an indoor auditorium. A curved concrete wall connects inside and out – a bold, sweeping architectural gesture embedded in the ground that Binswanger says evokes a ‘cave’. ‘It’s the ultimate impossibility: one slab merges with the slab below and creates this connection,’ she says.

In the lofty interior, seating accommodates over 500 people across formal and informal arrangements. The curved concrete wall defining the space sets the tone for the building’s interior architecture, where there are few straight lines.

Most striking of this approach, an almond-shaped ‘cut’ into the building results in a full-height atrium that brings natural daylight deep into the structure through a glazed roof light. What results is an arresting canyon-like space, overlooked by meeting rooms, with timber-clad walls and a concrete staircase that snakes up to the first floor.

Throughout the building, an abundance of curved walls creates a fluidity of movement and visual softness – not to mention a lack of oppressive corridors. ‘It’s about leading people through and making them curious,’ says Binswanger of the layout.

The 71,202 sq m building is arranged into zones of modulated privacy and formality, mixing open-plan, desk-based working areas with breakout and meeting rooms of different sizes, nap rooms, and spaces where leisure and collaborative work commingle. Particularly impressive are the double-height, lounge-meet-breakout spaces on the second and fifth floors, flooded with natural daylight and featuring panoramic views of the lake and mountains beyond.

Such aspects of the design, alongside amenities including a restaurant and fitness centre, reflect the desire for the building to support employee wellbeing. ‘You have to do something that makes people happy,’ says Binswanger.

Part of the building is dedicated to Lombard Odier’s client interactions. Visitors are welcomed through a dedicated lakeside entrance that leads to ‘salons’ on floors above, with luxuriously fitted-out meeting rooms. Interior designer Rodolphe Parente was appointed to design these spaces, adopting a darker and richer palette, furnishing in a domestically informed way, and crafting rooms that offer a greater sense of privacy and discretion, all vital for the bank’s clientele.

While designed around programmatic need, One Roof also centres on sustainable architecture and design, and the building is targeting BREEAM Outstanding certification. Though concrete, a high-carbon material, was used structurally for its robust resilience and high thermal mass, the architects employed recycled cement in the foundations, timber in interior fit-outs, and prioritised locally sourced materials. Outside, a verdant landscape features 160 trees, accompanied by beehives and insect hotels.

Energy efficiency was crucial for the project, which is heated and cooled using GeniLac, a system harnessing the water from Lake Geneva. Topping the building is a 750 sq m solar-panel array alongside a green roof; meanwhile, a 444-cubic-metre rainwater-collection tank facilitates water reuse. Automated sensor-based systems ensure energy is only used when it is needed, and the cantilevering floor plates shade the building’s façade, reducing solar gain, supported by automatic window shades.

Herzog & de Meuron was appointed to the project in 2017, following a competition, winning out against practices including OMA and Bjarke Ingels' BIG. Though the expected completion date was 2021, the disruptions of Covid-19 and the unexpected discovery of rare orchids on site, which had to be temporarily relocated, pushed the timeline back. Geneva-based firm Favre & Guth worked alongside Herzog & de Meuron as the executive architect.