Roche Tissue Diagnostics Central Utility Plant

Oro Valley, Arizona

This project effectuates the Roche corporate initiative of embracing sustainable, energy-efficient design and eliminating all non-natural refrigerants from Roche properties worldwide.

Project Details

Creating Harmony with the Site’s Natural, Desert Environment

The architecture’s simple, utility-driven forms and warm, desert-inspired material palette expresses an equilibrium between the project’s technological objectives, internal functional requirements, and sustainability goals.

Design Facilitates Function

The mechanical equipment screen walls were very carefully designed for optimum function and aesthetic sensitivity to context, integrating high-end, metal-clad exterior acoustic panels with noise controlling ventilation louvers into a carefully detailed structural steel framework.

The Roche Tissue Diagnostics Central Utility Plant (formerly Ventana Medical Systems, Inc.) project was sanctioned in order to effectuate the Roche corporate initiative to embrace sustainable, energy-efficient design, eliminating all non-natural refrigerants from Roche properties worldwide. Interestingly, this rather utilitarian project was also required to meet very rigid aesthetic and context-sensitive design requirements from both Roche and from the surrounding Town of Oro Valley.

The scope of the project included the construction a new central utility plant with more efficient and sustainable chillers, including space for additional chillers to be added in the future. The project also included the installation of pumps for transporting the chilled water to all six campus buildings, the conversion of all existing HVAC equipment on campus from DX to chilled water, and the incorporation of a centralized Server Gallery for campus data systems. The architectural solution brings into harmony the machines of man with the natural, desert environment in which they exist.

The architecture’s simple, utility-driven forms, and warm, desert-inspired material palette of split-faced masonry and metal, expresses an equilibrium between the project’s technological objectives, internal functional requirements, and the larger concerns of the local environment, energy usage, and sustainability. The plan arrangement is simple, clear, and efficient like a well-engineered machine, arranging the chillers, pumps, server room and circulation into a rational, straightforward plan.

Roche Tissue Diagnostics Central Utility Plant

Creating Harmony with the Site’s Natural, Desert Environment

Design Facilitates Function

Roche Building W7 Warehouse Addition

Roche Diagnostics Lab and Office

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