High-rack warehouse Ricola AG

Ricola is a company that specializes in the production of candies and medications made from medicinal herbs. The company headquarters, as well as production, is located in the town of Laufen.
In the second half of the 1980s, the board of Ricola decided to build a new automated warehouse. The foundation of the warehouse is an operating system measuring 60 x 26 x 17 meters. The architects' task was to design the canopy of this facility. Herzog & de Meuron did not look far for inspiration and were influenced by local building traditions. The motif of the feathered facade was borrowed from the traditional structures of sawmills, of which there are countless in the foothills of the Jura Alps. The wooden feathers were replaced with contemporary material - eternit. With a sophisticated design of an insulated and ventilated envelope, they achieved optimal internal thermal comfort for the warehouse. The building hovers above the terrain, as the warehouse floor rests on a grid of concrete pillows - ventilated envelopes in all directions.
The subdivision of the warehouse's mass draws from the tradition of classical urban palaces, where the building body rests on a pedestal crowned by a cornice. The base of the warehouse is expressed through the densification of the feathering, and the crown is marked by vertically positioned rafters of the crown cornice. The golden ratio was used in the facade division. Thus, a purely modern technology has gained a classically designed shell.
The candy warehouse in Laufen is the first building that I can unreservedly say smells good to me. Pleasant menthol, lemon, mint, and other scents waft from the giant flask. Happy warehouse workers racing around on forklifts in the adjacent area smile and respect the architectural enthusiasts with safely curved arcs.
My only complaint is the somewhat misleading facade of the building, which evokes the storage of wood or stone. The fact that the creators were aware of this discrepancy is evidenced by the more refined younger brother of the warehouse in Laufen - the green menthol warehouse in Mulhouse, France.