Since muba 2012 closed its doors, radical changes have come about on Exhibition Square in Basel: on 23 April, work started on dismantling the old hall complex and has been progressing steadily ever since. Concrete and steel elements are being veritably crushed to pieces by demolition excavators. There are currently a total of 16 bulldozers on our building site, which is most likely Switzerland's biggest building site at the moment - this includes one of the biggest pieces of machinery weighing no less than 200 tons. And, to keep the amount of dust down as far as possible, a number of water jet machines are in operation with the aim of binding the dust at the point of demolition already. The demolished material is constantly being transported away for subsequent recycling.
Once the demolition work has been completed, at the start of June, the shell of the basements and the cores will be put in place. Following this, the facade will be mounted in the period up until the end of the year, while work will start on the interior at the start of August already, in parallel to the work on the building shell.
The schedule for the new Messe Basel building is exceedingly tight, making for sharp contrasts– while the demolition work is taking place at one point, the facade is already being mounted on those parts of the building that are already in place. All the work is being carried out in a confined space right in the heart of our urban setting and constitutes a major logistical challenge, which has so far been mastered without any problems.