CIBA Fabrikationsgebäude, Basel 1946

Introduction

During the semester, we were assigned existing buildings to be rehabilitated. The task was in a first step to analyse the given buildings, indentify their qualities and evaluate their environmental impact and then, in a second step, to find a program for the ground floor and develop typologies for housing on the upper floors.

The buildings we studied were built by Suter+Suter architects in 1946 as a production buildings for the chemical company Ciba, which through mergers and acquisitions has today become Novartis and BASF. They are situated, in the Klybeck Areal in the north of Basel, close to the port and the rhine. The Klybeck Areal is the former 28’000 square meter production site of Novartis and BASF, where over 2’000 chemicals were produced in the last century. The site was today sold to private in- vestors, Swiss Life and Central Real Estate Basel, who are, since 2016 planning in collaboration with the city, the rehabilitation of the entire site into housing and offices, for 30’000 inhabitants and 20’000 workplaces. The site will most likely be demolished unless it enters heritage preservation. Our build- ings are situated at the end of the Mauerstrasse. All the buildings along the Mauerstrasse, are defined by historically valuable brick facades, that reflect the industrial character of their original function. The brick was produced in Allschwil, a village 6,5 km from the site, by the most important brick and tile factory of the 20th Century in Switzerland.

In the first part of this report, we analyse the environmental impact of on the one hand, the existing buildings and, on the other hand, of the housing typologies on the upper floors. In the second part, based on the numbers from the first part, we looked at potential scenarios for the future of the Kly- beck Areal.