Action cinema in Basel

Basel’s cinemas are suffering the unfortunate fate of all cinemas during the pandemic. They must patiently await the end of their temporary forced closure. Meanwhile, every week in Basel, our engineers and designers encounter scenery on the construction site of the conversion of the Felix Platter Spital that could well have been taken from the action genre: great forces, a lot of tension and bursting concrete characterize the scenario of the construction site. The photo stream vividly reproduces the busy atmosphere.
The listed former hospital building, a typical post-war modernist structure with a delicate exterior appearance, is currently being converted into a residential building on behalf of the building cooperative wohnen&mehr. Based on the success of the competition with Müller Sigrist Architekten and Rapp Architekten, 135 apartments with a very versatile design are being created on the upper floors of the building. A cascade-like staircase, the “Rue Interieure”, connects these to the public spaces on the first floor and to the two-story entrance foyer.

The protection of historical monuments is a high priority in the project. Accordingly, the structural design concept aims to preserve the building as much as possible. An essential part of the reconstruction is the seismic retrofitting of the building. Two new staircases and longitudinal shear walls along the cascade staircase are activated as additional bracing elements. Anchored in the ground with micropiles, they take over a large part of the actions in the event of an earthquake.
Temporary steel towers secure the building structure during demolition work in the area of the two-story entrance hall. Later, new concrete columns and walls will be built in as new load-bearing elements.

Special thanks are due at this point to the builders of Implenia Switzerland, who implemented the demanding ingenious specifications with precision and quality awareness.