Description

The Industrielle Werke Basel (IWB) build and maintain the city’s infrastructure for the supply of water, gas, district heating, and electrical power. To provide efficient storage facilities for the more than 8,000 prefab elements and spares, a new storage building at a central location was required. Completed in September 1999, the new central storage facility of IWB is situated on the premises of the Rheinhafen port in the Basel district of Kleinhüningen. The site is well connected to the rail network and local road system.

Prefabricated elements made of concrete or other weather resistant materials can be stored outside. Most elements used by IWB, however, require dry storage space in a closed building. The architect Stefan Baader split the brief according to a rough classification of the stored goods and proposed three different volumes: a four-storey storage building with a ceiling height of 6 m and a loading capacity of 3 t/m² where transportable parts are stored in boxes and on pallets; a covered open-air storage for tubes, masts, street-lights, etc., which is a lightweight steel structure; and a tube-like building, which serves as a storage for cable drums. Cranes on rail tracks service the open-air storage and the storage for cable drums; in the multi-storey storage building forklifts perform this task. To ensure short distances to the public infrastructure the three buildings are placed parallel to each other adjacent to the rail tracks.

The structure of the four-storey storage building is a reinforced concrete skeleton, which is stiffened by in-situ concrete staircase/lift cores. The required short construction time could be met by the application of prefab elements. All around, the building is clad with robust insulated concrete elements, which suit their purpose. Concrete elements were also used for the cable drum storage. Here, ribbed panels form the roof which is supported by load-bearing sandwich elements of the façade. These elements provide stiffening along the longitudinal axis of the building; prefab columns provide transverse stiffening. Profiled, stiffening metal sheets form the roof skin of the open-air storage.

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Originally published in: Jürgen Adam, Katharina Hausmann, Frank Jüttner, Industrial Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.