Parking with style
Some may be horrified at the sight of it. But the multilevel car park near Horburgpark is an architectural jewel that stands as a relic of a time when driving was still considered an innocent pleasure.
Text by Patrick Tschan, photos by Adriano A. Biondo
Published on 04/10/2021
Today, cities fight over every parking lot. Each eliminated lot stirs much controversy and debate, while some go as far as to suggest that the loss of even a single parking lot is an existential threat to the city. But once upon a time, everything was quite different: “I grew up without traffic, which was ideal for a youngster. You could play ball games in the street. There were never any cars around,” says former Ciba employee Paul Nickler, recalling his childhood on the streets of Basel in the 1930s and 1940s.
As World War II raged across Europe, the army seized all nonessential vehicles for the purpose of national defense. “You know, during the war, Basel had two or three cars with wood carburetors, that was it. The rest came by horse and buggy,” notes Nickler, who began his apprenticeship at Ciba in 1947.
As soon as the war was over, the economy began to recover, with the automobile becoming a powerful symbol of this newfound prosperity.
Cars were becoming cheaper, while the purchasing power of the Swiss was growing. Mass motorization was underway: Between 1950 and 1960, the number of registered passenger cars in Switzerland rose from 146 998 to 509 279 and in the canton of Basel-Stadt from 8469 to 24 873. There was no end in sight to the boom.
For city and traffic planners, a question soon arose: Where to park all these cars? Car parks – with the first one being built in 1901 in London at Piccadilly Circus – were considered the most practical solution to the problem. This was also the case for Ciba, as space was getting scarce at the Klybeck site, and, at the same time, more and more employees were coming to work by car.
At the end of the 1950s, Ciba took up the challenge and commissioned architectural firm Suter + Suter to design a parking garage. Completed in 1963, the building continues to impress with its unparalleled style.
Consequently, the monument preservation office of the canton of Basel-Stadt included the stately structure in the inventory of industrial buildings worthy of protection, describing it as a “rhythmized white cube reminiscent of the minimalist art that was just emerging at the time.”
Surely, this cube evokes the elegance of a time when driving and parking, which today face a considerable political and social headwind, were still something of a luxury and not a mass pleasure.
