BEYELER FOUNDATION MUSEUM

Riehen (Basel), Switzerland

1992-97

Renzo Piano Building Workshop

The Beyeler Foundation Museum is beautifully embedded in its place. Despite an all glass roof, it is exceptionally energy efficient, a condition achieved by precise engineering rather than any innovative strategy. The result of a public/private partnership, the museum gives the public access to an exceptional private collection of modern art and is set in the park-like grounds of an historic villa that now houses the museum restaurant and offices. The museum is squeezed between the stone walls that edge the long sides of the site, and the generating motif of the plan, four long parallel walls, seems almost a direct consequence of these pressures. Over these heavy, dark, earth-bound walls, clad in a stone resembling the local sandstone, floats a diaphanous roof of glass and steel shaded by rows of sloping panes of milky glass. These are the upper-most layers of a series of elements that control the admission of light. These include horizontal, automatically controlled louvers in a deep loft space sealed below by a glass ceiling above the galleries, and the panels of perforated steel that form the visible ceiling. This loft also forms a thermal buffer, reducing heat gains and losses. Adding further energy efficiencies is the displacement air-conditioning system that keeps conditions stable in the lower parts of the tall galleries occupied by paintings and people while allowing temperatures to fluctuate under the ceiling, where air is exhausted to pass through heat exchangers. This is a subtly suggestive building. When first seen, end-on, rising from a pool, it seems to be a small, temple-like sanctuary for contemplating art. It is then revealed to be also a large, tunable machine that combines the provision of ideal light and humidity conditions with energy efficiency. It proves that achieving the latter is not incompatible with architecture of the very highest artistic standards in a building that marries in glorious harmony architecture, art, technology and nature. Shades of green: Low energy/high performance; total life cycle costing; embedded in place.

[photo credits: 1, Christian Richters; 2,Michel Denance]