Helsinki Dreispitz
Münchenstein, Switzerland
2008-2014
Helsinki
Dreispitz.
Overview
Client
EG Basel Dreispitz, St. Gallen, Switzerland
Architecture
Herzog & de Meuron, Basel, Switzerland
Team ZPF
Jörg Brändlin, Heike Egli-Erhart, Helmuth Pauli, Sali Sadikaj, Andreas Schnetzer, Nico Ros, Christian Rudin, Andreas Zachmann
Awards
Auszeichnung Guter Bauten Kanton Basel-Landschaft Kanton Basel-Stadt 2018
Helsinki Dreispitz is the first residential building on the Dreispitz site and encompasses 41 rental flats, as well as a storage area and offices. A juxtaposition of living, working and culture manifests itself on the Dreispitz site, as well as within this building. The storage area accommodates Herzog & de Meuron’s comprehensive archives and a collection of artworks belonging to the company. The offices are currently also used by Herzog & de Meuron.
Emanating from an almost trapezoidal footprint with dimensions of around 43 x 17/28 m on the ground floor, Helsinki Dreispitz comprises two underground floors, four base floors with storage and exhibition rooms, and eight office or residential floors. The outline of the largely closed-off base follows the pre-existing train tracks, while the upwardly tapering shape of the building, which is 40 m tall, adheres to the permissible clearance profile.
The load-bearing structure consists of a concrete skeleton with flat slabs, resting on columns and load-bearing walls, both in the core area and on the northern and southern sides of the base. The horizontal bracing is provided by these U-shaped load-bearing walls on the northern and southern sides, as well as by the in-situ-concrete cores of floors four to eleven, installed between the third floor slab and the foundation slab. Due to their installation within the base, the building cores are very slim, as they only brace the seven upper storeys. Moreover, from the fourth floor upwards, the fourth core was left out, so as to generate extra living space on each storey. Unlike the building’s base, the upper floors are designed to be as pliant as possible, so as to minimise seismic forces.