Neue Kuppel Basel

Pop music has its roots in a subculture that consciously emancipated itself from high culture from the 1960s onwards and quickly established itself through its success. The „Kuppel Basel“ is part of this history, which has recently regained importance. The competition project VOLUME 2 revives the essence of the pop culture movement in a new way. The design for the concert hall under the cupola fulfils the desire for a special sound and spatial experience. The hall is built for the music, it should unfold within it.

The „Neue Kuppel Basel“ consists of two individual buildings - the „Kuppel“, meaning cupola in German, and „Volume 3“ - which are connected underground by a shared basement. The „Kuppel“ serves as a location for the club and party scene as well as for concerts and other cultural events. Band rehearsal rooms and a transformer room are located in the basement, the foyer, bar and storage on the ground floor, the concert hall with dance floor and stage, bar and storage on the first floor under the cupola and the gallery for the audience and the artists‘ dressing rooms on the first floor. „Volume 3“ is used as an office building with a café/restaurant on the ground floor and a music club in the basement.

The cupola building consists of three upper storeys (including the ground floor) with a floor plan in the shape of a non-equilateral octagon. The domed roof has the shape of an irregular cross vault of intersecting barrel shells. The main supporting elements are eight cross ribs in the intersecting arches of the barrel shells. The vault segments spanned between them are made of in-situ concrete. ‘Volume 3’ also consists of three above-ground storeys with a rectangular floor plan and flat roof. The load-bearing structure of the building is a reinforced concrete skeleton construction with flat ceilings resting on columns and wall discs along the façade, which provide horizontal bracing and sound insulation to the outside.

The façade of the „Kuppel“ consists of a steel skeleton that forms the corners of the building and the storey ceilings and is lined with brick-work. The façade is almost completely self-supporting and is only connected to the inner shell in a few places due to the sound insulation requirements. The masonry is therefore vertically pre-stressed with threaded rods made of stainless steel and clamped between the steel beams.