Empa and Eawag expand campus

On Wednesday, construction was symbolically started on the expansion to the research campus of Empa and Eawag in Dübendorf. The ground-breaking ceremony provided the green light for a new laboratory building. A multi-purpose building and a parking lot are also planned on the plot spanning 20,000 square meters. According to a press release by Empa, completion is scheduled for mid-2024 .

The laboratory building will provide space for around 60 new laboratories and offices, while the multi-purpose building offers 1,000 square meters of office space with a restaurant area on the ground floor. All parking spaces will be moved to the new parking lot, which is to provide space for 260 vehicles in total. This will make external areas safer and more inviting for pedestrians and cyclists. This also means that more greenery is possible.

In future, research will take place not only in the new buildings, but also around and with them. Innovations from Empa laboratories will be utilized above all with regard to energy and building technology. For example, there are plans for a field with geothermal probes that store the warmth from the buildings and release it back out in winter. A research project will then investigate how this innovation affects the campus’s energy consumption.