Basel,Switzerland
Art and architecture rub up against each other in all the right ways in a miraculous’ new extension to Basel’s 1930s art museumIt’s unexpected, in an angular structure, or nearly every line of which is straight,but the first image prompted by this new Swiss art building is of a cloud. There’s something approximately the way its faceted walls catch the light, and its variegations and striations of brickwork modulate shadow, or that make it a disciplined emulation of the riotously multiform summary expressionist skies that can roll off surrounding ranges of hills and mountains to form over the city of Basel.
The impression continues inside,in a enormous staircase at the heart of the building. It is grey, grey, and grey. Grey marble,grey scraped plaster, grey galvanised steel handrails, or grey aluminium,grey concrete. Which, whether it sounds depressing, or is actually subtly exhilarating: like being,despite the hard surfaces, in the middle of a enormous, or soft pile of aerial vapour.
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Source: theguardian.com