A short history of the St-Johann Works

More than 2000 years have passed since the Celts lived in the area of Basel now occupied by the St-Johann site. With the establishment of Chemische Fabrik Kern & Sandoz in 1886, dynamic industrial development began on the same spot and progressed from the production of dyes and later manufacture of drugs through to today’s Campus of Knowledge. In his portrayal, Walter Dettwiler, Head of the Novartis Company Archives, delves into the various eras of this development.

Text by Michael Mildner, photos: Novartis

In the spring of 1886, the first factory belonging to Chemische Fabrik Kern & Sandoz was completed on the St-Johann site in Basel. This photograph was taken in 1890.

Table of contents

World War I: takeoff at the St-Johann works

The 1950s and 1960s: the boom years of building

From building slump to Campus kickoff

This article was originally published in August 2013.

With the exception of sulphur manufacture, industrial chemistry started out as dye production. The synthesis of the first artificial dyes in 1856 triggered a gold-rush mood in Europe. Every dye expert in the dye works and cloth printing industries tried to discover similar substances, or at least to acquire the formula. In 1859, the silk dyer Alexander Clavel-Oswald in Basel started producing synthetic dyes. In the 1860s other Basel companies started producing artificial dyes. In 1886, Chemische Fabrik Kern & Sandoz started production in the northwest part of the city. Like the other dye factories, it was built outside the former Basel residential quarter on an approximately 11 000-square-meter lot. Next door, the hide broker Gebrüder Bloch&Cie., the chemical factory Durand & Huguenin, and the municipal gas works were located. At the time it was not known that the new dye factory and its neighbors were occupying grounds that the Celts had settled between 150 and 80 BC. This settlement had reached a maximum extent of 15 hectares, between the Rhine and what today is Voltaplatz. The archaeologists have unearthed several thousand individual pieces on the site, including coins made of gold and silver.

A fabulous beginning

The factory of the chemist Alfred Kern and the salesman Edouard Sandoz consisted of an office building with an adjoining laboratory, three connected sawtooth-roofed production buildings, and a boiler house with a 12-horsepower steam engine. Unlike the Basel chemical factories in the early years, the new company enjoyed dynamic growth from the very beginning. Ten years after the factory’s foundation, its grounds had expanded to over 63 000 square meters. The unpaved streets linking the grounds were, according to an eyewitness report, dusty when the sun was shining and impassable when it rained: “The many vehicles which daily delivered ice, coal, and other loads transformed the streets into a morass. It was almost impossible to make one’s way without wooden shoes, and just about everyone who had anything to do with the factory went the whole year in wooden shoes.”

The first aerial photograph of the buildings, taken in 1895 from an altitude of 450 meters from the “Urania” balloon. It shows the gas works and the plants belonging to Sandoz & Cie. and Durand & Huguenin.

World War I: takeoff at the St-Johann works

World War I was a bonanza for the chemical industry in Basel. Since the dominant German competition was not then a factor, the Basel chemical factories became the main suppliers overnight, so to speak, for the English textile industry, the market leader at the time. While in 1914 the turnover of the Chemische Fabrik formerly Sandoz was just 6 million Swiss francs, by 1916 it had already reached 29.5 million, growing in 1918 to 37 million francs! Thanks to the sensational increase in business, a far-reaching modernization and expansion of the production apparatus was implemented during World War I at the St-Johann works, which was extended from the 1920s to the 1930s.

The old sawtooth-roofed buildings gave way to multi-story manufacturing locations in which vertical operation was implemented for the first time. According to a contemporary Swiss architecture magazine, these new industrial buildings took into account “the demands of our time,” because they fulfilled “in reference to their exterior the striving for beauty, and in reference to their interior, the desire for practicality.” These were the industrial buildings of Ernst Eckenstein, who was the house architect of the company from 1915 until World War II. His last project on the St-Johann grounds was the administration building designed by Wilhelm Brodtbeck and Fritz Bohny.

This triangle-shaped building, which was completed in 1939 and later called “Gebäude 200” (200 Building), was extended to form a rectangle through the addition of two wings after World War II.

For many decades, these production facilities shaped the industrial landscape of St-Johann, as illustrated by this aerial photograph taken in 1946. At the left edge of the photo it is possible to see what today is Forum 1, which was later expanded to a rectangle with an inner courtyard.

The 1950s and 1960s: the boom years of building

These were the times of economic boom, when the Basel chemical group grew rapidly. The respective pharmaceutical branches grew into a giant corporate phenomenon. From 1950 to 1969 the Group turnover of Sandoz AG grew from 278 million to 2.5 billion Swiss francs. The appearance of the St-Johann works changed fundamentally and at breakneck speed: The area was consolidated, unused lots were built upon, and old buildings were torn down and replaced with modern high-rises. In 1956, a magnitude of 20 million Swiss francs per year was expended for only the most urgent needs, but by 1960 the building investments had doubled and in 1965 they rose to 80 million francs per year. In 1960, construction was begun on Area 5. The office and laboratory 503 Building was built here in two stages between 1961 and 1968 by Burckhardt Architekten and, at a height of 77 meters, was extraordinary by Swiss standards. In 1965 the Burckhardt Architekten-planned offices of the 202 Building were completed: The structure today called Forum 2 was supposedly the first Basel industrial building to be built from prefabricated parts. In the same year the new restaurant for factory personnel run by Conrad Mueller and his coworker, Guido Doppler, went into business. In 1969 Sandoz finally took over the neighboring dye manufacturer Durand & Huguenin, and the surface area of about 29 000 square meters this accrued rounded off the St-Johann grounds in a useful fashion. In the 1970s the last significant above-ground buildings in the Basel Sandoz works were built by Burckhardt Architekten and Burckhardt + Partner: in 1973 the laboratory 360 Building and the office high-rise 210 Building, and in 1976 the research spaces of the 386 Building.

Aerial photograph from 1995, nine years before the completion of the first Campus building. The increasing importance of administration and research facilities is clear to see from the air.

From building slump to Campus kickoff

With the advent of the oil crisis in 1973, the long period of economic boom came to an end and gave way to an economic situation that was determined by much shorter upward and downward swings. As a consequence of the recession, Sandoz massively curtailed Group-wide investments in buildings, facilities, and real estate beginning in 1975. This put a substantial brake on the formerly busy construction developments at the St-Johann Works. In the 1980s, investment activities started up again, whereby modernization of production facilities and projects for environmental protection and security took center stage. The only “visible” new construction on the St-Johann grounds until the fusion in 1996 from which Novartis emerged was the 25 Building. This building, which went into operation in 1993, served the production of prioritized active pharmaceutical ingredients. The renovation and reconstruction of the 200 Building – today called Forum 1 – was completed in 2002, and at the end of this reconstruction phase the inner courtyard of the building was also redesigned. These last projects were simultaneously the starting point for the redesign of the entire St-Johann grounds into a “Campus of Knowledge.”

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