Main Building

The CERN Main Building, financed by the Swiss Confederation and built in 1959.

The CERN Main Building, also known as Building 60, was constructed in at the end of the 1950s. It is designed by the Zurich architect Rudolf Steiger.

Buildings that have written the history of modern architecture are living through a decisive period. Suffering from numerous ailments due to their age, from a lack of understanding, and sometimes even from a certain unpopularity, the threats they face are becoming increasingly concrete, ranging from normative and ill-adapted transformations to outright demolition. These works represent a genuine heritage for the community, one that the effects of time have gradually obscured. As ageing and everyday pragmatism transform the building, the qualities that once earned it its recognized status have become barely perceptible.

Yet these buildings contain great potential: for clients, who benefit from a valued, exploited, and emblematic property on the one hand; for society, which enriches its cultural heritage on the other; and finally for architects, as a means of knowledge, a source of inspiration, and a professional resource.

The CERN site in Meyrin, owing to its extraterritorial status and its specific activities, is a unique place that can nonetheless be classified among scientific campuses. A great number of experimental infrastructures—halls, circular tunnels, laboratories—were created as the necessary equipment for CERN’s research and discoveries. Their nucleus, which constituted the very first phase of construction of the site and still today forms the heart of the scientific city, was designed by the Zurich architect Rudolf Steiger, a founding member of CIAM and a major protagonist of modern architecture in Switzerland.

When he received the commission for the first planning stages and cost estimates for CERN, which he would later develop with his son Peter Steiger, he was completing the construction of the Zurich Cantonal Hospital in collaboration with Max Ernst Haefeli and Werner Max Moser. Their joint work—later labelled “HMS”—initiated by the Werkbundsiedlung Neubühl in Zurich and the Zurich Kongresshaus, as well as their individual works, would earn them national and international recognition.

For the planning of CERN, constraints specific to nuclear and scientific activities formed the basis of the configuration of this coherent ensemble, despite the diversity of buildings with strong and expressive identities. Among these experimental halls and laboratories, a built ensemble ensured the hosting of collective activities and visitors, affirming the institution’s representational role. The Main Building continues to play this central role to this day.

However, the general condition of the building, its undeniable qualitative wear, and the evolution of requirements cast doubt on its future. Its original qualities have been disrupted by a series of ad hoc transformations responding to immediate needs, and by solutions showing little concern for the coherence and integrity of the work. These interventions have ultimately contributed to obsolescence by leading to the banalization of spaces and the under-exploitation of the potential for spatial quality and representativeness.

For these qualities to be appreciated once again, they must be revealed through a meticulous and comprehensive approach. The opportunity for preservation will be confirmed by the analysis and diagnosis of the existing building. Its rehabilitation will consist of numerous localized interventions, adapted to specific needs, with the objective of restoring the integrity of the work and thus ensuring the long-term preservation of its heritage value.

This will involve treating pathologies and improving comfort and physical performance in order to meet current programmatic needs—the ultimate condition for its preservation. By maintaining and reaffirming the functions it houses, one will preserve not only the material substance but, even more importantly, the conceptual essence of the work.

The recommendations for the rehabilitation of the Main Building, based on the study of archival documents and on surveys and visual diagnoses of the existing structure, aim to establish a coherent framework for interventions and treatments addressing the multiple situations that arise in the rehabilitation of such a building.