Opened in 1849, the Basel Museum of Culture is one of the city's most famous and, if I may say so, wealthy cultural institutions. The collection of the museum has more than 300 thousand exhibits and is annually replenished with generous donations from individuals and organizations. Such an intensive increase in the collection has repeatedly raised the question of expanding museum holdings: the first reconstruction was carried out in 1917, the second in 2001, but by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the cultural institution again needed additional space. To solve this problem, perhaps the most famous architectural duo of Switzerland, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, was invited.
It was impossible to attach another building to the museum complex: located in the center of Basel, it is sandwiched by a dense ring of the same valuable historical and cultural objects. And then the architects found a truly Solomon solution: donating the roof of the museum, which he acquired during the reconstruction of 1917, they added an additional floor to the building and covered it with a roof of an unusual design. Formed by several folds of various configurations (here not only the width, but also the depth of the resulting "skates" vary), it is faced with greenish-black ceramic tiles.
Each tile is hexagon-shaped and polished to a high gloss, giving the entire structure an extremely expressive “scaly” texture. This effect is multiplied by uneven masonry: some tiles are sunk deeper than others. Thanks to the resulting texture, the color of the material, and its very silhouette, the roof fits perfectly into the panorama of the medieval city - on the one hand, the superstructure is in dialogue with the tiled roofs of houses and the spiers of cathedrals, on the other, it obviously emphasizes its modern origin. Another interesting effect is that even on the most cloudy day, the new end of the museum building looks very bright, as numerous facets refract and reflect light.
The entrance from the new exhibition space, at the suggestion of the architects, is organized through the former backyard of the museum complex - from a service space for purely economic purposes, it has been turned into a cozy public area with paving and climbing plants hanging from the oily black roof.
A. M.
