1 apartment building, 72 units
competition entry

address: Schaffhauserrheinweg, Basel, Switzerland
client: Bau – und Verkehrsdepartement Kanton Basel-Stadt

project: 2009

Bevk Perović project team:
Matija Bevk
Vasa J. Perović
Gonzalo Piqueras
Tina Marn
Ida Sedušak
Gerrit Neumann
Blaž Hartman

The location of the new housing is an area of a former Childrens Hospital (Kinderspital) in Basel, positioned on a prominent location bordering on the Rhine river, and overlooking the Old Basel city. The brief asked for a combination of rental units  for first time dwellers – younger professional families with children (facing mainly towards the back of the site) and ownership units for older, affluent families, where kids are already away from home, facing the expansive river/city views.

The response – a ‘snaking’ volume, lifted from the ground and suspended on columns of staircases, takes its ‘cue’ from the continuance of surrounding urban tissue, while trying to establish an idea of a large, accessible public park flowing through the site.

The S-shape itself provides the ‘split’ between rental and ownership units – the rentals (smaller living rooms, more bedrooms) and ownership (larger living rooms, less bedrooms) apearing naturally in their respective designated areas.

The structure of the building is a continous beam, carried by massive concrete staircases touching the garden – top and bottom part of the beam are in concrete, connected in-between by a series of thin stainless steel columns that act simultaneously as facade supports for a completely glazed, partly transparent and partly mirror-finished undulating facade. It works as a 3-story inhabited bridge, transversing the site. Continous terraces envelop the entire structure, and are protected by a stainless steel mesh curtain on the outside, allowing for privacy and sun protection of the units.

The garden – given ‘back’ to the city, preserves the existing old trees and acts both as an entrance hall for the units and a large open city-space, in an area lacking public greenery.