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The southeast-facing façade of the new affordable apartment building in Basel, which was adapted from the Coop wine storage facility, expresses an eclectic character, with operable shades in terracotta and a light green metal frame system and railings.

Over its more than 70 years, the building that most recently housed the Coop wine storage warehouse in Lysbüchel, a former industrial zone of Basel, has taken on many guises. Each has left its own traces and scars. Sometime in the 1970s, for instance, the gable roof was torn off, the building was extended upward and outward, and its facade was completely clad in somber beige corrugated aluminum sheeting. All of this is history now: The warehouse has been radically transformed into vibrant and affordable housing.

Esch Sintzel, the Zurich firm that adapted the structure to its latest identity, has envisaged it as a city within a building — with long rues intérieures, inspired by Le Corbusier, where residents can interact with one another. “The house as a city — with internal streets, paths and squares for the community — promotes the exchange and coexistence of the 170 residents and connects the domestic with the urban sphere,” explains Marco Rickenbacher, the project architect.

The living area in the affordable housing in Basel by Esch Sintzel architects
The apartments range from 1.5- to 7.5-room suites, and are anchored by the original concrete columns, as well as timber pillars.

These streets provide access to the four stairwells and a variety of communal areas like the laundry rooms, the flexible “joker rooms” for children or adult workspaces, a bicycle workshop and subterranean rehearsal rooms. They also provide access to the 64 apartments, which range from cozy 1.5-room units to spacious suites that boast 7.5 rooms and cater to every age and stage of life.

The building’s history is embedded directly into the project. After winning a competition launched by the Habitat Foundation, Esch Sintzel faced the task of deciding how much of its existing fabric to retain and how much to demolish. One of the competition’s prerequisites was to conserve as much embodied carbon as possible — and so it was decided to maintain the heart of the original 1955 building: its distinctive monumental mushroom columns. With this simple gesture, the firm saved as much as 45 per cent of the project’s potential grey energy demands. (This move, however, did not lower construction costs, which shows that preservation is not necessarily cheaper.)

The kitchens feature base units of generous depth made with maritime pine plywood panels — an economical option that nonetheless imbues liveliness and warmth to the Basel affordable housing building.
The kitchens feature base units of generous depth made with maritime pine plywood panels — an economical option that nonetheless imbues liveliness and warmth. “To protect the oiled wooden panels, we added a synthetic resin inlay to the handles, a reference to a chest of drawers by Josef Frank,” says architect Marco Rickenbacher.

The architects carved away the depth of the building from 19 to 16.5 metres, thus allowing more sunlight to penetrate into the apartments; they also added an extra level so the building now rises to seven floors (it also has three underground levels). Another requirement was to limit the footprint to a maximum of 45 square metres per inhabitant, including public spaces and

corridors. With its careful planning, the firm managed to reduce that amount to a mere 40 square metres per resident. Despite this, the apartments still feel lofty. What space is subtracted from them is compensated for in the generous communal areas. The firm also stripped the facade of its 1970s guise — its second face — by removing the load-bearing parapet walls and dismantling the drab corrugation (with its toxic paint). The mid-rise’s new visage is a light green–painted steel structure with southeast- and northwest-facing balconies and terracotta fabric awnings that lend it a playful dynamic, as every unit has its blinds lowered to a different degree.

A typical hallway in this affordable housing in Basel by Esch Sintzel adheres to a considered palette, including navy blue apartment doors with transom windows, pale green wall tiling and concrete mushroom columns.
A typical hallway adheres to a considered palette, including navy blue apartment doors with transom windows, pale green wall tiling and concrete mushroom columns.

To bolster the project’s structural integrity, after doing away with the load-bearing facade, the firm inserted 200 massive spruce wood columns into the building. Interestingly, these locally sourced tree trunks had to be felled and purchased in 2018, two years in advance of the sitework, so they could be debarked and left to dry out sufficiently — a risky investment compounded by the COVID pandemic. With the double layer of columns (the original concrete pillars and the new timber ones) carrying the entire weight of the building, none of the interior walls need to be load-bearing. The self-supporting balconies, which are screwed together, can also be easily deconstructed if needed. These measures free up the building for a potential fourth identity in the future.

The architects at Esch Sintzel ensured that the renovated building had ample public space, including this enclosed terrace with city views.
The architects ensured that the renovated building had ample public space, including this enclosed terrace with city views.

As they stand now, the eclectic balconies already communicate the building’s expansive new character to the city around it. In fact, the building nurtures this dialogue in various ways. Oriented toward the city, the commercial spaces, including the gym and the café, book-end the ground floor, thereby providing lateral stability in case of an earthquake. (Basel, which lies in a high-risk earthquake zone, has strict regulations in this regard.) The public walkways culminate on the timber deck at the uppermost level, a communal room for get-togethers that features high tables for enjoying aperitifs and boasts sweeping views of the surroundings, including the Jura mountains in the distance.

A dramatic before and after: above, the new iteration of the Basel affordable housing building, and below, the defunct Coop wine storage facility.
A dramatic before and after: above, the new iteration of the building, and below, the defunct Coop wine storage facility.

With all of its architecture projects, Esch Sintzel seeks to “make a contribution to sustainability.” While the firm does not rule out demolition or partial demolition when called for, it embraces the ideas of the circular economy and the re-use of building components. “In addition to the ecological issue, existing buildings have made us more creative as architects,” Rickenbacher says. “Despite a standardized housing program (non-profit housing), with this project, we were able to spatially break out of convention. And because we humans are narrative beings, we wanted to keep the different layers of time and interventions in the existing building legible.”

Photo by Raphael Schicker

Besides retaining the mushroom supports and the core structure, he and his team undertook several green measures. The dismantled steel girders and supports were sold to a recycling company, and the aluminum sheeting was used in other projects. Furthermore, virtually every horizontal roof surface is clad in photovoltaic panels to generate 150kWp of energy. There is also a groundwater heat pump that warms the building in the winter and cools it during the summer.

Thanks to these efforts, the building produces two-thirds of its energy needs and has been awarded the Swiss Minergie-P-ECO certification. Esch Sintzel’s project symbolically and effectively connects past and future. It is concrete proof that derelict industrial buildings can be transformed into lively, sustainable places for living in the 21st century. As Rickenbacher says, “If the intervention doesn’t make the place better, it can’t be architecture.”

From Wine Storage Building to Winning Affordable Apartments in Basel

In Basel, the architecture firm Esch Sintzel transforms a drab wine storage warehouse into a vibrant affordable housing building – and demonstrates how adaptive re-use can breathe new life into former industrial neighbourhoods.

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