Home About ScKA Project catalogue Refurbishment of the former Armory in Basel, 2014 - 17 Image: Adriano Biondo The former Armory in Basel is part of the southern infrastructural premises of the city and therefore close to a vast railway container terminal. The Area of the Armory consists of a heritage protected main building and multiple mechanical workshops on the site which are still used by the city. Parts of these premises had to be refurbished and a new garage had to be built. We followed different strategies. For the main building we restored the open spaces which were once typical for armory buildings. To re-expose the original beams and girders, we removed most of the cardboard rooms which were since built in and replaced these by wooden boxes to contain meeting and infrastructural uses in the open space office rooms. The new garage is placed at the southern edge of the compound. Here a much used access road enters the city and the site becomes visible to the Public. The new garage is conceived as a raw concrete box and fortified with iron-oxyd. Given that, the concrete relates to the yellowish color which is typical for the sandstone color of the nearby armory building. The large gates of the new garage are colored in dark brown which gives the building further relation to the nearby railway terminal within its rough urban environment. Image: Adriano Biondo Image: Adriano Biondo |