Sports centre Pfaffenholz
Basel/St. Louis, Switzerland/France
Project 1989-1990
Realisation 1992-1993
Pfaffenholz.
Overview
Client
Bürgerspital Basel, Switzerland
Architecture
Herzog & de Meuron, Basel, Switzerland
Awards
Auszeichnung Guter Bauten Kanton Basel-Landschaft Kanton Basel-Stadt 1997
This sports centre is located precisely on the border between Basel and Saint-Louis in the French part of Basel's surrounding agglomeration. Built onto the large hall, which can be divided into three smaller gymnasiums and a gymnastics room, a long low building with an extensive projecting roof serves as the main entrance and accommodates infrastructural elements such as a kiosk, changing rooms and equipment rooms.
The building envelope is made of large green glass panels with special imprinting that filters incident daylight. Impressive V-shaped supports and exposed-concrete surfaces characterise the interior of the sports hall. An athletics track, three football pitches and a covered all-weather field are arranged around the hall. A large amount of vegetation has been planted on the flat roof.
The sports hall and changing-room structure are made of in-situ concrete, except for the prefabricated, highly precise V-shaped supports. The underside of the projecting roof, the long facades and the forecourt are covered by prefabricated concrete slabs with surfaces that have been roughened using a specially developed printing technique: A setting retarder was systematically applied to the formwork, then the surface concrete was washed down before it set, so as to give the slabs their special pattern. This makes the concrete surface appear softer and almost textile-like, while also creating a visual link to the imprinted glass panels.