Aeschenplatz

Zirkular developed the reuse concept for the conversion and new construction of an office building by the architectural firm Christ & Gantenbein on Aeschenplatz in Basel.

In the mid-1980s, Burckhardt Architekten planned and realized the existing building as the headquarters of Swiss Bank Corporation. The building has five full storeys above ground, a façade around 150 m long facing Aeschenplatz and four basement storeys that cover almost the entire area of the 10,876 m² plot.

The property is to be transformed into a multifunctional, vibrant urban building block that connects with the adjacent urban space.  The client invited seven architectural firms to take part in a commissioned study competition in 2023. The entry by Christ & Gantenbein, who collaborated with Zirkular to create the reuse concept, placed sixth.

Christ & Gantenbein’s plan proposed to demolish the existing three rear wings. The lower Gartenstrasse was to be occupied by a new row of buildings staggered in height and built as hybrid skeleton structures in accordance with the principles of resource-conserving construction methods.

Many of the materials resulting from the demolition of the three wings were to be reused in the addition of storeys to the existing and the new buildings. The planned reuse of the existing façade elements offer a good example of the amount of material that was to be made available for the new design. The elements included approximately 1,100m² of natural stone, 1,400m² of aluminum, and 4,000m² of laminated glass that were planned into the new design. The construction was then based on the “design to disassembly” concept – i.e. it could be dismantled and repaired. The materials used were to be documented in component passports and dismantling concepts for later dismantling and potential future reuse.