Kunstmuseum Basel, conversion and extension — façade
Basel, Switzerland
Competition 1st prize 2009
Project and execution 2010-2016
Kunst-
museum.
Overview
Client
Hochbau-und Planungsamt Basel-Stadt, Switzerland
Architecture
Christ & Gantenbein, Basel, Switzerland
Team ZPF
Jörg Brändlin, Enrico Cristini, Heike Egli-Erhart, Ana Maria Eigenmann, Antje Käser Wassmer, Luis Looser, Conor Murphy, Noor Musawi, Helmuth Pauli, Susanne Peterson, Alexandra Schmid, Andreas Schnetzer, Robert Vögtlin, Andreas Zachmann
Awards
Auszeichnung Guter Bauten Kanton Basel-Landschaft Kanton Basel-Stadt 2018
Wienerberger Brick Award 2018: «Grand Prize» und «Sharing Public Spaces»
Fritz-Höger-Preis 2017: Special Mention
Red Dot Award 2016 und IF Design Award Gold (Lichtfries)
With Kunstmuseum Basel’s new building, a prominent location in inner-city Basel has been reclaimed. The extended museum comprises two directly interrelating buildings on opposite sides of the street.
The facade, an archaic-looking grey brick wall with timeless character, is designed as self-supporting monolithic masonry. Much like the facade on the main building, the new building’s facade also appears to have the classical partitioning of base, body and top, due to the stones’ different light hues and the relief. The new building and main building speak the same language, but tell different stories.
The outer wall has a double skin and comprises an inner, load-bearing, bracing concrete wall and an outer brick facade in front. The distance between them is 28 cm (24 cm of insulation and 4 cm of empty space). Horizontally and vertically movable anchors between the inner and outer skins, as well as ductile facade corners, make the seamless masonry facade possible, enhancing the homogeneity of the building’s appearance.
The outer shell, about 172 to 197 mm thick, is made of Danish solid bricks (228 × 108 × 40 mm). It is free-standing, intrinsically reinforced and anchored to the inner concrete wall from behind. This construction method is not a new invention, but was at least rediscovered here and implemented in a large-scale project again for the first time. The project was accompanied by comprehensive experimental tests on the stones, the mortar and the anchoring. Sensors on the facade mock-up confirmed the applicable temperature fluctuations.