<Swiss Culture Radio and Television, Basel, 2014–2019

The Swiss Radio and Television has its current cultural location with high-tech radio drama and radio studios over four floors in the Meret Oppenheim high-rise (designed and realized by Herzog de Meuron), right next to Basel's SBB train station. Since the summer of 2019, not only the cultural programs will be broadcast from the rooms that have been individually built for SRF. The editorial departments for science and fiction as well as Swiss Satellite Radio (SSART) and 3sat also work here, a total of 340 SRF journalists.

Although the building is in a lively hotspot in Basel's Gundeli district, noise remains outside. After passing through the glass facade and entrance, elevators and a staircase leads to the editorial and studio rooms. A view opens up on all sides over the field of tracks and into the neighborhood.

The interior design of the nearly 8,000-square-meter space on the base floors of the high-rise forms a "house-within-a-house". On the first floor are audio play studios, separated by a control room, and an auditorium for public events, TV as well as radio productions. The technical equipment can be extended by an outside broadcast van, then the auditorium becomes a studio.

The upper floors are divided into central communication zones and peripheral "open space" zones. Editors work in this area along the window fronts. Each person decides which space they would like to occupy in their editorial office in order to work on daily changing projects. Between these workplaces are retreat rooms of different sizes, immersed in daylight.

The recording and broadcast studios are no longer dim, closed-off rooms packed with technology, isolated from the environment. Even their walls are open and included in the continuous interplay of colors, light gray and petrol. All other rooms, except the wet rooms, are covered with oak parquet. Peter Suter developed the color concept. "In the openness of the open-plan office, the use of color seeks to link the wall sections interrupted by passages to an embracing spatial pattern. The wall painting makes itself independent of the expanse given by the architecture. It sometimes ends even before the wall forms a corner and also extends from the walls to the ceilings in order to end up, after a slight protrusion, in a straight line and parallel to the wall. In this zone, all the wires and lamps mounted and hanging from the ceiling are cut by the color overlap. A wall painting that is compliant with the architectural specification achieves the appearance of color which adds movement to the static state of the spaces."