In its first edition in 2022, Architekturwoche Basel called for the design and construction of a building made exclusively from recycled materials. In the second edition in 2024, we are once again looking at the impact of the built environment on the climate, for obvious reasons, and in this Open Call we are asking the broader question of transformation: How can we put existing buildings and structures to a new use? Can we adapt the existing with a minimum of effort and energy and reuse buildings that have lost their original function in a contemporary way?

During AWB’24 from September 7 to 13, 2024, the RESERVOIR – a multi-storey parking lot on Leimgrubenweg in Basel’s Dreispitz district with an underground water reservoir – will serve as a space for discussions, exhibitions and as a laboratory for ideas and experiments. The open call was not only aimed at architects, but also at teams and individuals from transversal fields, at visionary minds from different disciplines.

The AWB’24 team is overwhelmed by the number and quality of the Open Call submissions. Some of the 161 proposals dealt with the spatial, historical and cultural references of the water basins and the topic of water in general. They address the pollution of the Rhine after the major fire in the Schweizerhalle industrial area in 1986 or the purification, filtering and treatment of industrial water, the use of the water reservoir as an energy supplier, the transformation of the building into a temporary fountain or a public bath, a place for sport, swimming and recreation, embedded in parks and gardens, a space for contemplation and fun. But other themes also emerged: the building as an acoustic element, as an instrument of sound. The RESERVOIR was to serve as a door opener for perception and imagination or as an impulse generator for transforming the building into a battery to overcome the energy crisis. The submissions showed past, present and possibilities for the future, designed memorials for dead fish or hallucinogenic atmospheres.

The jury selected ‘Resonance’ as the winning project from 161 submissions. Two architects and one artist – Marcel Arndt, Tim Berresheim, Wiebke Schlüter and Wolfgang Zeh – proposed a sound installation in the RESERVOIR. The building will become an echo chamber of ideas by listening to the former retention basin and its visitors and acoustically recording and amplifying these encounters. The sensitive treatment of the building and the theme of transformation through sound fit perfectly into the context of Architecture Week Basel 2024.

In addition to the visitors, various environmental factors such as temperature and humidity and their changes should control the soundscape and give the building an acoustic “voice”. The Open Call jury’s verdict: “The idea of using the entire building as a resonating body is convincing. By encouraging visitors and everyday users to interact with the soundscapes in the building’s various basins, the project gives the concrete masses of the reservoir a new kind of sensory experience and transforms it into an echo chamber for ideas.”

The Open Call RESERVOIR and the intervention with its accompanying events are supported by the Christoph Merian Stiftung.