Building Basel Architecture Museum sheds light on new approaches to heritage conservation
To mark the 50th anniversary of the European Year of Monument Conservation, the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel, in collaboration with ETH Zurich, is taking a look at the history and future of monument conservation. The focus is on the tension between preservation and new construction.
04.04.2025, 14:37
SDA
In stereotypical thinking, monument preservation is associated with a conservative attitude, while the discipline of architecture is fixated on new buildings. The relationship between architecture and heritage conservation has long been characterized by great mistrust, said exhibition curator Yuma Shinohare during a media tour of the exhibition on Friday.
However, the subtitle of the exhibition "Experiments between heritage conservation and architecture" indicates that these conflicts have been defused. The preservation of monuments is no longer understood as mummification, while in architecture, not least for environmental reasons, the insight is gaining ground that more value should be placed on existing buildings, said museum director Andreas Ruby.
The exhibition spans an arc from the past to the future in three chapters with numerous examples.
The starting point is the proclamation of the European Year of Monument Protection 50 years ago. This was intended as a reaction to the rampant boom in new construction in the post-war years. Examples are documented which show that the protection of existing architectural and urban buildings was only slowly able to assert itself.
Changing values in dealing with existing buildings
50 years later, there has been a marked change in values, as documented in ten selected examples. The existing is recognized as a quality that must be used. What is indispensable for listed buildings, such as the old riding arena in Aarau, is also gaining acceptance for other buildings. For example, a non-protected building of the Basler Kantonalbank from 1966, which was not demolished but carefully renovated to make it more energy-efficient.
The history of the extension to the Zurich Congress Center is documented in detail in a separate room. A planned new building failed at the ballot box in 2008. This was followed by a new project by the Bosch Diener consortium, which replaced the disfiguring extensions from the 1980s with a restrained extension in the style of the old building.
In the last room, the Squadra architecture collective has built a cross-shaped bar, which is intended as a forum for the future of the merging of protection and building. Programmatically, the designers primarily used materials and objects from the museum's collection for this room.
The exhibition "War War Werden Könnte - Experimente zwischen Denkmalpflege und Architektur", conceived in collaboration with the Chair of Construction Heritage and Monument Conservation at ETH Zurich, is on display until September 14.
