There’s a unique abundance of contemporary buildings at the German–French–Swiss tri-border region – By Klaus Grimberg
Is that building actually a house, or a walk-in sculpture? The long rectangular shapes with their pointed roofs seem to be set on top of each other haphazardly like a pile of pick-up-sticks. The adventurous construction seems like a fragile assembly of doghouses pulled long that cannot possibly be stable. On second glance you understand what this unusual construction actually is: a stroke of genius.
The “VitraHaus,” designed by the Swiss star architects Herzog & de Meuron, opened in 2010 and is the most recent attraction at Vitra’s production site in Weil am Rhein in Germany. The household and office furniture manufacturer, famous around the world for its classic designer chairs in particular, came from nearby Basel across the border to this picturesque valley in the 1950s.
Then, in 1981, catastrophe struck: a major fire almost completely destroyed the production halls. No one could have imagined that what rose from the debris would become an international architectural mecca over the following decades. After English architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw built two halls by 1986, company owner Rolf Fehlbaum managed his first coup by engaging Frank Gehry, who was still an insider’s tip in the architecture scene in the mid-1980s.
Gehry’s ensemble, another hall and the spectacular Vitra Design Museum, opened in 1989. In it you can see all the stylistic elements that Gehry would later refine and bring to perfection. In the following years Fehlbaum proved his sure instinct for pioneering contemporary architecture yet again by getting Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid to build the fire station on the company premises that opened in 1993.
The expressive building looks like a lightening bolt hurled between the factory halls. This playful castle was the first realized work by the now world-celebrated architect. Japan’s Tadao Ando finally broke onto the European scene with his conference pavilion, completed in 1993, which picks up many classic Japanese stylistic conventions.
And with two further halls designed by Álvaro Siza (1994) from Portugal, and the Japanese architectural office SANAA (2010), there are now five winners of the Pritzker Prize – the most prestigious international award for architects – who have left their mark on the Vitra Campus.
Just as the VitraHaus is used as an interactive showroom for Vitra design products, the company’s architectural park also symbolizes a philosophy oriented toward timeless beauty and elegance. This constructed “corporate identity” is unique. And the whole tri-border region has since discovered architecture as a tourist attraction.
Another milestone in this regard was the 1997 opening of the “Fondation Beyeler” in Riehen, just a stone’s throw across the German-Swiss border. Italian architect Renzo Piano, yet another Pritzker Prize winner, integrated the exhibition building for Hildy and Ernst Beyeler’s outstanding art collection into the gentle rolling landscape of an old park. Using large glass panels the museum’s halls are connected with the surrounding area almost without a break – art and nature coalesce into a harmonious symbiosis.
Parallel to their successful gallery work, since the 1950s the Beyelers have put together a high-quality collection of the works of classic modernism. Almost all the great painters of the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century are represented with important works, including van Gogh, Monet and Rousseau, Picasso, Matisse and Miró, as well as Pollock, Rauschenberg and Warhol.
The center of Basel is just 20 minutes down the road from the Fondation Beyeler by tram. Over the past two decades the city has made a name for itself architecturally. For the most part, that’s due to Herzog & de Meuron, whose global success got started here.
The designers of Beijing’s Olympic stadium, the famous “Bird’s Nest,” and Munich’s football stadium created a large number of their sensational projects in Basel. The architecture duo’s international fame is based on a rather inconspicuous project they realized between 1994 and 1998 at Basel’s train station. They hid a new, central signal box behind a wavy facade of copper bands; the shimmering dynamic changes depending on how the light hits it.
Even here Herzog & de Meuron displayed great creativity in dealing with construction materials. Their modification of the local football stadium St. Jakob Park is also groundbreaking, with the indirect lighting highly regarded in the architecture scene. The same holds true for the shopping center with integrated senior citizens’ residence, which backs directly on to one of the stadium stands.
Thanks to Herzog & de Meuron today Basel is a center for international contemporary architecture. The concept that Vitra realized on its company premises in Weil is something that the city authorities are trying to adopt for their area in a modified version: they show courage for new buildings instead of timidity, vision instead of routine. The region has become an open-air trail for modern construction that, in this respect, outdoes even European metropolises.