New building Switzerland Innovation Park Innovaare
November 30, 2021
The Innovation Campus Switzerland Innovation Park Innovaare has been built on the site next to the world-renowned Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen/AG over the last three years - an important milestone for the canton of Aargau as a business and science location. The Innovaare research campus consists of a clean room hall, two adjoining main buildings with laboratory and office space and a parking garage with an overlying workshop hall.
ERNE Holzbau carried out the project as a full-service contract. ERNE Bauunternehmung carried out the civil engineering and master builder work.
Excavation and slope stabilization measures
The teams started the excavation work in November 2019. Around 82,000 cubic meters of excavated material was removed for the new building. As the site is located on a slope, the embankment had to be secured against slipping. The earth was therefore excavated in stages using an excavator. The soil was secured with nets, shotcrete, nails and anchors and then the next stage was excavated and secured. ERNE invested in a new BB7000 drilling excavator in order to efficiently implement the special civil engineering measures for the approximately 130-metre-long and, in places, up to 13-metre-deep shotcrete wall. The remote-controlled construction machine is a real quick-change artist and can be used for excavation, drilling and shotcrete work, depending on the carrier.
Construction of the underpass in two stages
An underpass was built to connect the new research campus to the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI. It allows pedestrians and vehicles to move directly between the buildings.
Construction took place in two stages, with a district heating pipeline being intercepted and a temporary bypass created for the cantonal road. Once the construction work was completed, the bypass was returned to its original route.
Complex new building for the innovation campus
Following completion of the excavation and foundation engineering work, the structural engineering work for the Innovaare Park in Villigen began in summer 2020 with the erection of the large crane - with a height of 80 meters and a 75-meter-long boom.
Around 45 workers worked daily on the seminal building ensemble on the complex large construction site. After the shell of the two-storey clean room building, which is located between the two main buildings but is separated in terms of vibration technology, the construction of the two main buildings with the laboratory and office space followed. The main buildings of the new building are each equipped with two passenger lifts, two staircases and a goods lift. The stairs and parts of the ceilings were constructed from prefabricated elements. Due to the limited space available and the enormous weight of some of the prefabricated elements, they had to be delivered, moved and installed just-in-time.
Successful completion of Park Innovaare in Villigen
Park Innovaare is another example of successful cooperation within the ERNE Group. ERNE AG Holzbau was responsible for the project as the technical contractor, while Gebr. Meier AG Rohrleitungsbau and ERNE AG Bauunternehmung were jointly responsible for the pipeline construction, civil engineering and structural engineering work.
Our teams started with excavation and special civil engineering and then raised the two striking building complexes upwards.
