Bike Square Novartis Campus
Back to Projects list- Location
- Basel, Switzerland
- Year
- 2017
- Client
- Novartis Pharma AG
- Team
- Martina Weiss, Till Armbrüster, Thomas Möritz
- Architects
- Marco Serra Architekt, Basel
More and more people are switching from cars to bikes for their daily commute, this is also true in the Swiss city of Basel. Exclusively for bicycles, the pharmaceutical group Novartis built an underground parking garage for its staff members on the campus. Completed in the summer of 2017, a generous subterranean space for more than 800 bicycles was created which forms an impressive architectural site.
Inspired by the famous Brazilian architecture of Lina Bo Bardi, architect Marco Serra gave the underground space corrugated concrete walls, while the exposed concrete ceiling and the PU flooring display a deep blue hue. The organic design vocabulary of the ribbed wall is continued in 16 large circular ceiling recesses, into which the team at Licht Kunst Licht planned oversized diffuse ring luminaires with a stately exterior diameter of 7m. The striking graphic gesture of the 16 luminous “wheels” is the result of a complex custom luminaire development.
Each luminaire consists of an annular slanting shell of white translucent PMMA, which has been divided into 12 individual segments. The light source consists of an LED ribbon with a 120° light distribution. In addition to insect proofing requirements, the concrete's construction tolerance represented an enormous challenge.
For the entrances to the bike parking, generous ramps and stair cases are illuminated by low-level wall recessed luminaires. A sophisticated detail integrates the fittings discreetly into the wavy concrete wall.
The park located above the bicycle garage was designed by the American landscape design practice Good Form Studio from Columbus, Ohio. Over the years, the pavilion's glazed roof will be overtaken by natural vegetation and shading through grapevines. Underneath, a playful installation of unshielded LED filament lamps on catenary cables has been implemented. The boardwalk crossing the park is illuminated by light bollards, which have been designed specifically for this project. They gently enhance the wooden deck and guide the evening visitor in a glare-free manner.