The old town buildings

Colors with a history

Eventually, the university resided in the three time-honored buildings of Basel's old town. In the course of the conversion to residential and office space, the question arose about the colors which could meet the requirements of both the altered use and the monuments' protection status.

The cuts across the color layers showed it; over the years one lived in colors which could correspond to the current taste too. Thus, the new color scheme builds on the nuances of the traditional pigments ocher and umbra. But the nuances are somewhat lighter than before and combined with coherent tints of white.

At the facades, in a pragmatic way, one used the colors shades of those pigments that were available at the time the buildings were erected. Thus, the older house now shows color tones of the pigments Caput Mortuum, a deep, dark iron oxide red with a tinge of violet, as well as green earth and the white of lime. Equivalent to that, the other facades were designed in the color scale of the historically younger pigments Chromium Oxide Green and Prussian Blue, respectively, of the mixture of those color shades.

The project: Refurbishment of three historical buildingsin the old town of Basel
One of the building is registered as a protected monument
Conversion to lofts and office space
Architecture: LOST Architekten
Color design and color samples: Farbica
Execution: 2016