What buildings are worth visiting in Basel?

Basel has many buildings worth visiting, such as the Foundation Art Museum and medical buildings.

Introduction to the buildings around Basel There are a large number of ultra-high-quality buildings worth visiting around Basel. These buildings are either foundation art galleries, medical buildings, or creative parks, all related to Basel's active artistic atmosphere, the Swiss' high living standards, and the powerful family consortium.

It is also in this environment that Basel architects are able to go out of Switzerland and hit it off with clients with artistic pursuits, creating cultural buildings suitable for public consumption. This model of practice started at the Tate and shows no signs of stopping. This art warehouse located in the suburbs is a very special type of building. It must be stored, displayed, and even restored.

It is not so much a "museum with amazing reserves" as a "partially open vault". On the urban side, the site is located in the industrial area of ??Dreispitz, which is about to be redeveloped. The building adopts a solemn attitude to respond to the surrounding industrial buildings and urban spaces that will be transformed, but there is a small entrance building with a family-sized scale at the entrance.

When people pass through this house, they have entered the huge 20-meter-high outdoor recessed space, and then through the foyer, they will see the 28-meter-high atrium above and below the ground of the building. This series of spatial transformations makes people perceive the scale of people in urban space. The building's exterior is made of rough brown concrete that resembles earth.

In fact, the architect did originally plan to build with rammed earth excavated from the construction site, but due to technical reasons, concrete mixed with site stones was eventually used. The rough concrete surface is also the texture source of the three-dimensional metal mesh, and the waves of the long window on the south wall are also the texture of the foyer interior.

In fact, the design density of this building is very high, but the overall effect is relatively quiet and fully serves the exhibits. This is quite different from Scarpa's pavilions full of details. The building's 30cm-thick exterior walls are made of cast-in-place concrete (thickened to 42cm at the window frames), and the formwork for the long horizontal windows is made of foam machined using a CNC machine.

The long horizontal window at the entrance of the building benefits from the 60-meter-wide and 22-meter-high integral truss above it. The entire building is full of technical challenges, but the technology serves the artistic effect and is not displayed in a constructive manner. The entire building and the permanent exhibits on the ground floor belong to the Laurenz Foundation, while the exhibits in the upper warehouse belong to the Emanuel Hoffman Foundation.

Most of the museum’s collections are top-notch collections that are often borrowed. People who love modern art should not miss it. As the land use contract for the Dreispitz industrial area gradually expires, regional development plans that have been formulated for many years are finally being slowly implemented. As pioneers, art and educational institutions were the first to enter the area.

This includes the Saurag Art Warehouse mentioned earlier, BIG’s warehouse renovation, NWFH’s Department of Industrial and Art Design, and the complex building to be mentioned soon. The priority for all buildings in the district is to change uses and increase urban density. The first priority for all buildings in the area is to change uses and increase urban density.

Facing the industrial road pattern and fragmented space, all new projects reshape urban space with industrial scale and intensity. This is very different from building in urban areas where rules are clearly defined in city blocks. The building's two underground floors and four above-ground floors belong to Herzog & de Meuron and are used to house the firm's archive models.

The fifth floor is the branch of the office, and the remaining seven floors are commercial residences. Such special functional zoning explains the volumetric relationship between the upper and lower layers of the building. At the same time, the building's volume and proportions, which break away from traditional aesthetics, are reminiscent of the Velasca Tower in Milan. The details of the building basically follow the high-quality practices common in Switzerland, but the drainage pipes between the upper and lower volumes are very unique.

The thick pipe mouth faces the building wall and can leave traces of moss on it. Artificial nature is a little poetic. People who have suffered neurological damage from accidents such as car accidents and falls need to relearn seemingly normal actions such as walking and eating after undergoing necessary surgeries. These patients typically require "anywhere from 6 months to as long as 18 months" of neurological rehabilitation.

Compared with a one-month stay in an ordinary hospital, the neurological rehabilitation center should be designed to be more like a place of life, and it should not even look like a hospital at all. The building's success is primarily due to its urban design. The city of Basel placed the Civic Hospital and REHAB Rehabilitation Center on the outskirts of the original city center.

There is less traffic here, the natural environment is excellent, and there are personal gardens and small zoos around, which is very conducive to the recovery of patients. The architects designed the hospital as a low, two-storey volume separated from its surroundings by tall grass fields. Patient privacy is taken seriously. When entering the building, one passes through the courtyard, directly to the center of the building, and then to the various subdivisions.

In addition to taking into account the basic efficiency of use, the building is equipped with a large number of "end-to-end" circular walkways, as well as nine courtyards, five large, four small and three. Patients in wheelchairs do not need to reverse the vehicle, and the working environment of doctors and nurses has also been improved.

This flat layout of the hospital has a demonstration effect on hospital design. Herzog and de Meuron are happy to continue this layout in other hospital projects and many children's hospital projects

The most dramatic space It belongs to the swimming pool courtyard. To preserve patient privacy, all skylight is shielded from external views, while the internal effect is reminiscent of a hammam. The skylight design has also been continued into the ward. The ceiling where bedridden patients often gaze is designed into a slight arc and wrapped with wood.

The skylight in the center is a stroke of genius. This glass ball is between the inside and outside. Viewed from the interior, the sky is very close to people and "can pick off the blue of the sky". Viewed from the exterior, it looks like a fallen planet on the rooftop grassland. The outdoor balcony is also designed to be very wide and can accommodate hospital beds placed at various angles, making it as comfortable as a nursing home.

For this building that was handed over in 2000, the structural design of its various structures and enclosure components has been subcontracted. There are also fully mature product solutions for various doors, windows, sunshade equipment and other details. At this time, the architect's level of detail is often reflected in aspects such as "product integration", "intimate design" and "special structure".

For example, a spherical skylight is composed of three parts: external wind protection, heat insulation, and rain protection, a single-layer equipment shielding in the middle, and an internal single-layer spherical decoration. Ventilation holes and horizontal sunshades are also provided between the structures. There are also artificial lights and annular radiators in the middle equipment layer. The entire system does not use unreachable high-tech products. The biggest difficulty is the degree of detail of "integration".

Since 2000, it has become increasingly difficult to assemble such architectural parts. Architects have had to use various molding products, not to mention the ones in the later works of Herzog and de Meuron. Products are stacked, even Zumthor is no exception. Therefore, in German-speaking areas, plane streamline design is particularly important. In Germany, this expertise is retained in offices experienced in hospital design.

In Switzerland, architects have professional hospital "flow consultation", so the threshold for hospital design is low. In German-speaking areas, the layout of internal instruments in wards is completed by professional "medical consultation", while in China they are often directly subcontracted to product manufacturers. The Pfaffenholz Sports Center is not a very famous work, but it is very telling.

First of all, this building is located in France, but it is only across the street from the REHAB Rehabilitation Center and Basel Civil Hospital. The building is funded by the Civil Hospital, but it is open to the public and serves the citizens of both countries. As far as the building itself is concerned, the volume of the building completely follows the function, the structure completely follows the construction, and the materials completely follow the experience.

When people walk into the building along the awning, they are surrounded by exquisite and durable concrete. Entering the room, the large area of ??sound-absorbing materials makes the huge space very quiet. Outdoors, the gymnasium is like a structure integrated into nature, without disturbing people's experience in the open space. For professional workers, the highlight of the building is the prefabricated printed concrete panels (printed glass in projects has become relatively common).

The pattern making process is roughly as follows: use concrete retardant to draw the pattern on the template, and then pour it normally; when the concrete is initially hardened, demould; wash the concrete surface with water, and use the cement stained with the coagulant. It will peel off and form patterns of varying roughness; it is finally cured again until the concrete is completely hardened.