In transforming a utilitarian champagne warehouse on Basel's periphery into a cathedral for contemporary art, Buchner Bründler Architekten have sidestepped the easy gesture of erasure.
Instead, their architectural intervention in the Kunsthaus Baselland presents a dialogue between fragility and fortitude, preservation and invention. The structure, once embedded in the logistic linearity of the Dreispitz site, has been re-scripted into a meditative spatial narrative that respects its industrial genealogy while proposing a new curatorial rhythm.
Rather than demolish the barely load-bearing shell, the architects wove a spatial insert into its core: a meandering matrix of prismatic light towers and exposed concrete. These towers puncture the roof plane, casting zenithal light into the double-height hall below. They read as contemporary campaniles in an industrial reliquary, both literal and symbolic structural supports. Their integration is not only architectural but atmospheric; the spatial sequencing they generate invites slowness, exploration, and vertical contemplation.
The spatial choreography is deliberately variegated. A bifurcation into two exhibition levels, interspersed with cutouts and voids, enables nuanced sightlines and curatorial agility. This volumetric interplay is heightened by the architectural honesty of materials: raw aluminum, corrugated fiber cement, and lime sandstone infill retain the language of infrastructure, yet are composed with a formal refinement that sidesteps pastiche. Even remnants like ramped bases and slender truss beams are reactivated as narrative devices.
Positioned alongside cultural neighbors such as Schaulager and Atelier Mondial, Kunsthaus Baselland functions as both a civic anchor and architectural interlocutor. Its porous entrance hall—doubling as public agora—cements its role in a growing cultural constellation on Basel's fringe. This is not simply adaptive reuse; it is architectural historiography with a distinctly contemporary accent.
