Honorable Mention: International Architecture Awards 2022
New Building for the Biozentrum University of Basel |
Basel, Switzerland | 2021

Architects: Ilg Santer Architekten
Landscape Architects: Krebs und Herde
General Contractor: Cantone Basel City and Basel Country
Client: Biozentrum of University of Basel
Photographers: Daisuke Hirabayashi Ana Skobe

Ilg Santer decided not to conceal the great amount of technology in the building but to bring it into visible harmony with the structure and space and to connect these with each other. In the structural concept for the laboratory building only the facade columns housing the building services and the four cores in the tower are loadbearing. The horizontal forces are transferred by facade frames in the form of Vierendeel trusses.

By combining these with the facade columns and the four cores, the building abandons the conventional solution for high-rise buildings in favor of a floor plan that is as open as possible at the middle, allowing considerable freedom in dividing up the different floor levels. On each of the standard floors, there are four professorial departments of equal size that share a communal middle zone.

More than six meters (about 19.5 feet) wide, this elonga- ted space is a place of arrival, a social meeting point, and the hub of operations. The floor plan has no internal columns and therefore offers considerable freedom in dividing up the laboratory spaces to meet the highly specific needs of the respective research groups. The structure and space, flexibility and efficiency, function, and design of the standard floor are precisely balanced and establish a pattern for the entire building.

An important element is the building’s three-story entrance hall. Not part of the client’s original commission, Andreas Ilg and Marcel Santer conceived it as a public urban forum that would provide an additional spatial value. Circular elements contrast with the building’s orthogonal basic structure and produce a spatial system rich in visual relationships, inter- locking with its surroundings, making the hall into the representative heart of the campus. Ilg Santer Architekten were also responsible for the entire interior design.