“With all the grace of a barnacle,” James Bartolacci writes in Architzer, “Herzog & de Meuron’s addition to the Museum der Kulturen in Basel sits atop an older structure that dates back to 1917. The museum building, the first of its kind to have been built in Basel, has white masonry walls that support the new black volume, creating a visual dichotomy that’s mediated by hanging green vines”.
Bartolacci’s assumption is that a barnacle is without grace. It may not have the grace of polished marble, but in clusters barnacles have an organic beauty and visceral power. And that is exactly the point of this remarkable, crustaceous roof addition. It’s as if an ancient relic from a primordial past was refashioned to become the museums umbrella, yet it is also aggressively contemporary. It’s a win-win.
The museum was founded in the middle of the nineteenth century, replacing the Augustinian monastery on the Münsterhügel. The classicist building by architect Melchior Berri opened in 1849 as the “Universal Museum”. In 1917, an extension by architects Vischer & Söhne was added.
When time came to expand, extending the building horizontally would have decreased the size of the beloved courtyard, the Schürhof. Instead, it grew vertically with a new roof of irregular folds clad in blackish green hexagonal ceramic tiles. The roof resonates with the medieval roofscape in which it is embedded, while at the same time, functioning as a clear sign of renewal in the heart of the neighborhood.
The tiles, some three-dimensional, refract the light even when the skies are overcast, much like the finely structured brick tiles on the roofs of the old town. And changes in light and temperature alter the color of the tiles; the look of the roof can, at times, range from a glossy black to scintillating sheets of facetted silver. Adding to the visual impact, the roof is not uniformly tiled; the holes in the pattern are set back, matte, and offer a visual counterpoint to the glamour of the tile. All in all, it is great achievement.
Garth Clark is the Chief Editor of CFile.
Image above: Herzog & de Meuron’s expansion of the Museum der Kulturen in Basel, Switzerland. Photograph courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron and the Museum der Kulturen.
Herzog & de Meuron’s expansion of the Museum der Kulturen in Basel, Switzerland. Photographs courtesy of the Museum der Kulturen.
Read the James Bartolacci article in Architzer
Visit Herzog and de Meuron
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