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Diener & Diener: The beauty of the real, Joseph Abram
Apartment Buildings Hammerstrasse, Basel
Apartment Buildings Riehenring, Basel
Apartment Buildings St. Alban-Tal, Basel
Office Building Steinentorberg, Basel
Showrooms and Administration Building for Manor, Basel
Administration Building Hochstrasse, Basel
Training and Conference Centre Viaduktstrasse, Basel
Administration Building Picassoplatz, Basel
Gmurzynska Gallery, Cologne
Office Building Kohlenberg, Basel
Vogesen School, Basel
Housing & Office Buildings Warteck Brewery, Basel
Apartment Buildings Parkkolonnaden, Berlin
Extension to the Centre Pasqu’Art, Biel
Hotel Schweizerhof, Migros Supermarket, Migros School, Lucerne
Apartment Buildings KNSM and Java Island, Amsterdam
Swiss Embassy, Berlin
Architecture beyond design, Adam Szymczyk in conversation with Roger Diener
Firmitas, Roger Diener
Masterplan for the University Harbour, Malmö
University Building, Malmö
Frankfurt Book Fair, Frankfurt am Main
Apartment and Office Building Bäumleingasse, Basel
Collection Rosengart, Lucerne
Ruhr Museum at Zeche Zollverein, Essen
Extension, National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome
Extension to the Pergamon Museum, Berlin
Residential Buildings Ypenburg, The Hague
Masterplan for the Maag Areal Plus, Zurich
Mobimo Tower, Zurich
Stücki Shopping Centre, Basel
Novartis Campus Forum 3, Basel
Casa A1 at the Olympic Village, Turin
Westkaai 1+2 Apartment Buildings, Antwerp
Convention Centre ‘ZürichForum’, Zurich
Shoah Memorial Drancy, Drancy
Music House for Instrumental Practice and Choral Rehearsal, Einsiedeln
Kunsthaus Zürich Extension, Zurich
Swiss Re Headquarters, Zurich
Kunstmuseum Basel Extension, Basel
New East Wing Expansion of the Museum of Natural History, Berlin
Architecture engagée: Diener & Diener, Martin Steinmann
Project chronology, 1976–2011
Biography and Bibliography
Index
The oeuvre of Diener & Diener is the work of many. My most sincere thanks goes to all my inspring partners in design, with whom I have collaborated for many years.
This monograph is a response to the curiosity brought to our work by Richard Schlagman as well as to his friendly patience, and also to the energy and the wise council of Emilia Terragni and Sara Goldsmith. Without their efforts, this monograph would not have come about.
Jean Robert and Käti Durrer were responsible for the design. They guided us in selecting images and texts in a manner far beyond mere professionalism and mutual friendship.
Isabel Halene worked closely with the designers and Phaidon Press to develop this project and with Annina von Planta in realizing it. For their work, long-standing partners of Diener & Diener, I am deeply grateful.
Finally, my thanks go to Joseph Abram, Martin Steinmann, Adam Szymczyk and Sabine von Fischer as well as to Helmut Federle and Peter Suter for their contributions to this book. Our conversation is dear to us.
Roger Diener
Thanks and acknowledgments
41
As is the case with other apartment buildings in the immediate neighbourhood, the Rie-
henring project is based on a programme of subsidized housing. The tree-lined passage
of the Hammerstrasse project situated on the adjacent block is continued as a narrower
path through the Riehenring courtyard, ending next to a basketball court.
The ground floor is dedicated to retail and commercial functions, which makes
the block a busy commercial and community centre at all times of the day. The public
character of the project continues in the wide courtyard, which serves as a recreational
space for the entire quarter. During the 1980s and 90s, film events were staged here, with
a projector mounted on the terrace and directed onto one of the gable walls of the older
buildings to the south. The roof terraces of apartment buildings are sun decks, provid-
ing hideaways high above the busy city and counterbalancing the collective space of the
courtyard.
As a response to the surrounding urban fabric, the changing articulation of the
facades coheres to, rather than disguises, the large scale of the project. Along Riehen-
ring, a busy main street, three building units are structured around inner courtyards. The
courtyard facades are clad with horizontally-mounted corrugated metal, and continuous
lines of balconies emphasize the building’s length. The street facades, where the living
rooms are placed, are comprised of a frame of concrete filled with metal and glass. The
street corner is the site of a unique moment on the block, where the pattern formed by
the lines of the concrete frames and corrugated metal sheeting of the building’s Riehen-
ring facade is continued, but in the form of horizontal metal slats. Around the corner, along
Amerbachstrasse, the compact volume is continuously clad with enamelled corrugated
aluminium above a fully glazed ground floor. On Efringerstrasse, the four building units
with stucco-finished fronts above a concrete base are separated by passages into the
courtyard.
Although it has the appearance of a commercial building, the block primarily
accommodates residential uses: the upper floors contain seventy-four apartment units of
various types. The sizes (from two to five bedrooms) allow for a diverse range of residents.
Apartment Buildings Riehenring Basel 1980–1985
Client Basellandschaftliche Beamtenversicherungskasse, Liestal Structural Engineer Léon Goldberg
Aerial view Opposite: Corner at Riehenring
While each of the three sides of the block has a specific configuration, all the floor plans
follow a logic of three highly permeable layers and create a middle zone that is not only
for circulation, but for living. The layout of the freestanding bathroom units and the diag-
onally-set open kitchens establish a spatial relationship between the entrance area and
the generous, street-facing living spaces. Daytime functions are not defined by separate
rooms, but by space-making elements that introduce a dynamism to the apartments.
RD Where the Apartment Buildings Hammerstrasse established a typological
and architectural relationship to the ideal city, the Apartment Buildings Riehenring
developed from an engagement with the biography of the site, which was previously
a galvanizing plant. The freedom that an industrial location offers should inform not
merely the building’s spatial organization, but also its expression.
42Apartment Buildings Riehenring, Basel, 1980–1985
Courtyard Opposite, clockwise from top left: Facade facing Efringerstrasse Inner corridor facing Amerbachstrasse View from the living space to the entrance area of an apartment facing Riehenring Balconies facing Efringerstrasse
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