November 9, 2004: A new landmark on the Cambridge skyline was unveiled today as the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) revealed the new look for the water tower atop its world research headquarters. Today’s community open house celebrated the transformation of the site—the former home of the New England Confectionery Company (NECCO)—from a candy factory into a state-of-the-art drug discovery research laboratory. The new water tower design maintains the colorful spirit of the old tower by incorporating the colors from the old NECCO tower in the bonded pairs of the new design, a DNA double helix that wraps around the tower.
The work of a local artist
In 1996, to celebrate its 150 year anniversary, NECCO painted the water tower on the roof of its factory to resemble its popular multi-colored wafer candy roll.
As the building’s new occupant, Novartis committed to maintaining the tower as a colorful landmark, but wanted to ensure that the tower’s design reflected the new life of the building beneath it. To do this, in February 2004, the company sponsored a “competition of ideas,” soliciting design ideas from the arts, design and school communities in Cambridge. After receiving more than 500 designs from artists of all ages, in April 2004, a jury of experts awarded cash prizes to multiple entrants in six categories. In addition, each Cambridge Public School that submitted at least one design was awarded a $500 grant for art supplies and each student that submitted a design was given two passes to Boston’s Museum of Science.
The design of the newly unveiled tower was inspired by the work of Somerville resident Joseph Depasquale, a student at the Katherine Martin Widmer School of Painting. Depasquale entered the design contest at the urging of Widmer, who had heard about the contest from a newspaper story. “I researched Novartis after I read the contest rules,” said Depasquale, “and I decided that the DNA helix was a natural fit.”
A building transformed
The unveiling of the tower marks a final phase of the huge changes that the building went through since its transformation into state-of-the-art labs for 1000 scientists was begun.
Christoph Dietsche, project manager for the transformation of the NECCO building remembers: “I came on board in August 2002, when some demolition work had just started. My job was to manage all the different contractors involved, mainly two architect companies, two engineering companies, one construction management company and a variety of consultants. I had to make all these people work together as a team that would fulfill the project goals in terms of quality, cost and schedule.”
Christoph Dietsche and his team had a couple of challenges to overcome in the first half of 2003, when four phases of the project — usually being done sequentially – were going on at the same time. Demolition, environmental remediation, construction and interior design had to be managed simultaneously in order to meet the schedule target. They managed the task and since April 2004, NIBR scientists began populating the building, eager to start or continue with their research projects.
