The skyline in Basel, Switzerland, is in for a change. Today, architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron announced it has won a bid to design a new master plan for the city's Nordspitze area—a neighborhood which currently only contains commercial spaces. Herzog & de Meuron have conceived a design which boasts not only a trio of sky-scraping residential towers but also a new expanse of green space.
The project is expected to provide 800 housing units for approximately 1,400 residents. In order to maximize livable space in Nordspitze, Herzog & de Meuron plan to relocate a massive parking lot and reduce the number of existing parking spaces to make room for the glass towers and two new public parks. Once completed, the cylinders will soar over three times the height of Basel's current tallest residential building. This undertaking is slated to wrap up in 2020.
The project is a chance for some of the architects' long-term urban research in Switzerland to finally take shape. In Herzog & de Meuron's 1991 paper with Rémy Zaugg titled “Eine Stadt im Werden?” (which translates to "A Nascent City?") the duo studied Basel's "political, environmental, and urban structures," concluding with plans for the city's future development. These investigations continued in 2001 with “Vision Dreispitz,” an urban study centering on the Swiss neighborhood that proposed how to bring it into the future. "Instead of a tabula rasa, we proposed juxtaposing various architectural typologies so that small, almost shabby structures would stand next to large-scale objects," the architects say on their firm's website. This strategy is in full effect in the new Nordspitze plan—three new skyscrapers will stand alongside the neighborhood's smaller, traditional buildings. Herzog & de Meuron sees this as the future of Basel's development.
Aside from reinventing the wheel in Switzerland, Herzog & de Meuron has seen a busy year stateside as well. Last summer, the Public Hotel, which was designed and developed with hotelier Ian Schrager, opened its doors (and Instagram-worthy escalators) in New York City. And lest we forget 56 Leonard, the now-iconic "Jenga Tower" in New York's Tribeca, which opened in late 2016. As we know, this firm doesn't shy away from making a splash across the skyline.
