2017
Invited Feasibility Study

Swissmetal Areal

Mixed-Use Dornach, Basel-Landschaft
Switzerland

From Swissmetal to Dornach-Widen

Our in-depth planning pursues the goal of creating a new living quarter on the industrial site of the Swissmetal in Dornach, which can be flexibly phased so at to offer a variety of high quality living and working space throughout every phase of realization.

The envisaged district development should be coherent, systematic and at the same time have a high degree of flexibility, in order to allow for possible changes that might occur during the project’s long-term realization horizon.

The district is intended to give mobilize the community of Dornach beyond the boundaries of the district, and to continue the developing city of Birsstadt with its attractive public, residential and workplaces, so as to make the ecologically and aesthetically valuable flat-land landscape of the Birs an regionally attractive recreational area.

The proximity to the river landscape and the simultaneous urban character of the surrounding area reveal a site with distinguishable attributes, in which the Birs coastline can remain discernable down to the depths of the developed quartier via the establishment of an urban fabric and outdoor spaces that open-up towards the river.

Rather than focusing on a big urban / architectural gesture it seeks to establish a permeable yet robust road and open space network.

The proposed new district, bound to the scale of the existing context proposes a type of urban fabric intertwined to its adjacent landscape. This way the structure of the open spaces form the backbone of the planning, in which site-specific architectural structures can manifest.

Client

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