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In Lörrach across the Swiss border from Basel, Mulder Zonderland and Moser Architekten build Lab02 for Runge Pharma, a translucent street facade that cascades into planted south terraces.
The street facade makes no claim on attention. Translucent corrugated synthetic-resin panels give the large block depth and lightness simultaneously — a surface that describes the building's scale without asserting it. A slim glazing band at the top and a filigree canopy complete the elevation. Reviewer Lukas Gruntz, writing for Architektur Basel, compared the result to Hans Christian Hansen's Bremerholm Transformer Station: infrastructural-elegant rather than representational. That is precisely the register the building inhabits.
Behind the street volume, the building steps back floor by floor toward the south. Sjoerd Zonderland describes the logic with precision: "Through the setback of each floor toward the south, all workstations are given direct visual and physical access to the green terraces. By placing the storage and logistics rooms in the interior of the building, the building depth is used optimally." The laboratories and offices that need daylight are at the perimeter; the storage and logistics functions that do not are tucked deeper in the plan and on the lower north-facing floors. The terrace typology, Zonderland says, "is the logical result of the programmatic requirements."
At the heart of the building's section is a near-monumental double-cascade staircase that links the interior and exterior of every level. It functions as the dividing element between the two functional halves — clinical and logistical — while also providing what Zonderland describes as a "communicative link": a public-feeling stair designed for social and informal meeting rather than purely transactional movement. The energy system closes the argument: photovoltaic modules integrated into the fully-glazed facade sections double as brise-soleil for summer shading, and the building operates with a "nearly autarkic energy supply" as a result.
Photographer Piotr Hraptovich documents Lab02 at a scale that shows both the street facade's restraint and the terrace cascade's generosity — the building's double life visible in images that move between the translucent corrugated exterior and the terraced south-facing volume of planted greenery. A pharmaceutical headquarters that earns its relationship to its site by understanding what the site actually needs.
