Located in the Gundeldingen Quarter of the Swiss city of Basel, the Südpark ensemble building reinterprets the neighborhood’s historical character, putting in a contemporary note through its skin. The new prefabrication techniques make it possible to erect this facade, which is designed with a commercially available synthetic stucco that gives it a matte silvery look. The seemingly random arrangement of unevenly sized windows on the facade is actually the result of applying a computer system that uses parametric programming codes developed by the architects and ETH Zurich. The twelve freely combined window shapes fuse into meandering, right-angled apertures and are designed to address the everyday activities of the senior citizens living inside, and give the Seniorenresidenz Südpark a more human scale. At selected points of the building the facade is extruded inward, creating sills that can be used as seats or rest spots.
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