By RICCARDO BIANCHINI - 2018-10-01

The Schaulager is a world-famous cultural institution and art center near Basel, Switzerland.

Housed in an iconic building designed by Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, the Schaulager is primarily a conservation center for the artworks belonging to the collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation.

The Hoffmann collection – which includes works by some of the world’s most important modern and contemporary artists, such as Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Julian Schnabel, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Richard Serra, and Jeff Wall, among others – can be visited on weekdays, by appointment, by schools or groups.

The Shaulager is open to all on the occasion of temporary exhibitions, events, and public lectures. See the Schaulager website to find when such events are scheduled to take place.

In-depth: the architecture of the Schaulager by Herzog & de Meuron

When Maja Oeri, chairperson of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation, chose Schaulager as the name for the new home of the artworks belonging to the foundation’s collection, clearly expressed the real aim of this unique center, located in Basel suburb. The term could be translated in English as “viewing-warehouse” or “exhibit-depot”, thus meaning a place where art is not simply stored but actively plays an educative, cultural and informative role.

The Hoffmann collection, composed of around 650 works by some of the most important modern and contemporary artists, from Dalí to Klee, from Beuys to Jeff Wall, just to name a few, is usually partially displayed on loan in two museums in Basel, the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Museum für Gegenwartskunst. But in the late 20th century, the desire to create a new kind of art center emerged; in 1999, a specific institution, the Laurenz Foundation, was therefore created to provide the artworks a proper conservation building but also to establish an innovative research and art dissemination center.

View of an exhibition room: “Holbein to Tillmans. Prominent Guests from the Kunstmuseum Basel”, Photo: Tom Bisig, Basel

The Swiss practice Herzog & de Meuron was selected to design the Schaulager as a 20,000 square meters center where the Hoffman Foundation’s artworks could be stored in optimal conditions, preserved, researched, set as inspiration for artists, presented to museum professionals and students.

Since the Schaulager is a hybrid between a warehouse and an art center, it was conceived nor as a traditional art storage facility, where artworks are usually stored in small, darkened and air-conditioned rooms, neither as a museum. In the Schaulager, artworks are arranged side by side on three levels of large, high-span, spaces, stacked on one another; two other floors are used as temporary exhibition spaces. The center includes also an auditorium, administration offices, a research library, seminar rooms, workshops, and technical services. The center was opened in 2003 and remodeled in 2013, with expanded areas for large artworks storage as well as for the library and the seminar rooms.

Top: photo Tom Bisig, Basel; middle: cross section, © Herzog & de Meuron

bottom: two views of the exhibition “Robert Gober. Work 1976 – 2007”, photo Tom Bisig, Basel

The building designed by Herzog & de Meuron is shaped like an almost crystalline polygonal form, quite solid in its appearance but the public entrance side is bent backward, provided of two large LED screens and “guarded” by a small gabled-roofed house; such arrangement forms a sort of forecourt, welcoming the visitors who approach the Schaulager.

top left: Photo Ruedi Walti, Basel; middle left: photo Detlef Schobert; right: photo john lord; bottom: photo Heinrich Helfenstein, Zürich

In order to fulfill the climatic requirements for an appropriate artworks conservation, but also to express the durability and protection connected to its function, the building walls were realized adopting a peculiar set of construction materials, providing both a high thermal inertia and a sense of strength and endurance. The Schaulager envelope was indeed made combining clay, gravel, pebbles, and concrete, together with reinforced concrete and metal. Gravel, clay, and pebbles were obtained from the building foundation excavation.

The wall surface was thereafter scratched to expose the aggregates, providing the building with a rough and earthy appearance. To further enhance the concept of a heavy building “looking as it if had been extruded from the ground” (from Herzog & de Meuron project description), the window openings and even the perforated-metal enclosures were designed accordingly to the geometry of the pebbles encased inside the walls.

from top left to bottom right, photos by Rosemary, Detlef Schobert, Detlef Schobert, Leon and Tim Snell

The full-height entrance all provides a spectacular view on all five levels of the building and allow the visitors to get a precise idea of the Schaulager’s functions as well as of its being a true “cave of wonders”.

Photos: top, middle left, and bottom by Tom Bisig, Basel; middle right by Ruedi Walti, Basel

Cover image by Heinrich Helfenstein, Zürich. All photos courtesy of Schaulager