MET Architects
Vogesen stadium
best architects 21
education buildings
Place
Basel, Switzerland
Studio
Photos
Ruedi Walti
Description
The
Vogesen, Pestalozzi and St. Johann schools of Basel form an open block
perimeter around a school playground with an underground gymnasium and swimming
hall. Six concrete girders span the hall. Due to recurring problems with the
waterproofing of the ceiling and the layout of the courtyard no longer meeting
the needs of the surrounding schools, the renovation of the structure and
redesign of the space was commissioned in 2017. Laid out with synthetic sports flooring, the courtyard now offers two
basketball courts. The rows of seats were dismantled down to their supporting
structure, renovated and supplemented with two covered grandstands, which
extend across the entire width of the court and form a stadium-like space that
can be used by the schools and the neighbourhood for break, sports and leisure
activities. The two sunken atriums for lighting the underground halls at the ends of the
square have been retained. The new concrete half-frames that support the
grandstand roofs are seamlessly attached to the exterior previously non-load
bearing concrete columns and are anchored into the
interior concrete girders with bolts. The two roofs are highly visible from the schools. In order to avoid moisture
permeating the concrete and to take into account the high visibility, the roofs
were covered with the same red synthetic surface that was used for the
basketball courts. Thus, the playing field is visually extended beyond the
schools and makes the stadium identifiable from the upper floors of the
surrounding buildings.