DIENER & DIENER

DIENER DIENER &

JOSEPH ABRAMROGER DIENERSABINE VON FISCHERMARTIN STEINMANNADAM SZYMCZYK

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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

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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

44Apartment Buildings Riehenring, Basel, 1980–1985

From top: Site plan Typical floor plan, three-bedroom apartments facing Efringerstrasse Typical floor plan, three-bedroom apartments facing Riehenring Opposite, from top: Cross-section Ground-floor plan

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