A double-curved timber shell constructed from 7,700 timber pieces forms the Swatch Headquarters by Shigeru Ban in Biel, Switzerland. The watchmaker’s campus centres on a 240-metre-long timber vault – one of the largest wooden structures in Europe, claims the practice. …The 7,700 timber pieces forming the gridshell roof of the Swatch building were engineered with a precision of 0.1 millimetres. The architecture studio said the design is “playful, innovative and provocative” and demonstrates the capabilities of timber construction at a large scale. Inside, a triple-height atrium leads to three storeys of office space sitting within this wooden shell. The timber superstructure has been left exposed where it meets the edge of each floor plate and on the ceiling of the upper level.