With the new Roche Diagnostics Innovation Center Penzberg, Nickl & Partner has designed one of the world’s most advanced development centers for in-vitro diagnostics. In the future, around 1,000 of the site’s approximately 7,900 employees will work here on highly innovative diagnostic tests for neurology, cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases, as well as on specific testing methods for personalized medicine.
Location: Penzberg, Germany
Client: Roche Diagnostics GmbH
Photography: Philip Kottlorz
Opening: 2026
Two building volumes, with laboratories in the east and offices in the west, are connected by a 33-meter-high, light-filled atrium that fosters exchange, transparency, and identity: an architectural stage for encounters and spontaneous interaction. Open bridges, planted islands, and visual connections create an architectural landscape of communication. While the office building, with its timber structure, conveys warmth and openness, the laboratory wing, with its precise reinforced-concrete skeleton, represents technical excellence.
Photovoltaics, green roofs, and intelligent building management reduce CO₂ emissions by 70%. The project combines modularity, sustainability, and human-centered design: a research architecture that understands science as a collective process and makes the dialogue between technology, nature, and society visible.
