Tours that connect Basel's old town, 19th c. neighbourhoods and contemporary architecture
ALONG THE RHEIN:
MUSEUM TINGUELY TO KASERNE
MUSEUM TINGUELY TO KASERNE
This 2-hour tour gives a feel for the way the city has developed on the northern side of the Rhine through time. From the former Solitude countryside estate we walk through the Roche complex, originally an industrial zone isolated from the city. Developed more recently as a state-of-the art corporate campus, well integrated within its urban surroundings, it has become one of Basel’s landmarks. We talk about new buildings on the campus and how Herzog & de Meuron have interpreted the company’s 1930s modernist identity in contemporary language. We also address the controversy related to the demand for the Refit-Reuse-Recycle approach to the older Roche buildings. Continuing our tour, we see how this concept was - or was not - applied in the past on the Warteck brewery, the Kartause monastery and the Klingental convent, the medieval Kleinbasel houses, as well as the military barracks of the Kaserne. We end the tour at the top of the southern tower of the Kaserne, with a bird’s-eye view of both Gross- and Kleinbasel.
FROM MEDIEVAL TO CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE:
ST.ALBAN-TAL TO GELLERT
This walk takes us through almost one thousand years of Basel’s history. We start just outside of what used to be the city’s inner defence walls, and continue through the picturesque St.Alban-Tal. Developed around St.Alban monastery in medieval times, and known historically for its water mills and silk ribbon manufacturing, this area was renovated about fourty years ago through historical reconstruction, formal reinterpretation, and modernist intervention. From St.Alban-Tor we continue to Gellert, a neighbourhood of grand villas and generous gardens laid out originally in the late 19 th century, when Basel began to expand to the open landscape extending beyond the city’s outer ring of walls. In the late 20 th century, however, may fin-de-siècle estates gave way to apartment complexes and office buildings. At the end of our tour we will see how one such development from the 1950s has been successfully reinterpreted by Herzog & de Meuron Architects: our walk will end at the Helvetia Campus, with the possibility of having a lunch at the top floor of a high-rise completed earlier this year.
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