Students: Reto Gsell, Evert Klinkenberg
Location: Group work in Basel
Date: January, 2007
Type: Research project, student work, living

The history of Birsfelden: old workers town, industrial and chemical, representing the dark side of Basel. No access to the river, occupied and blocked by the last harbor in the sequence of Basel harbors. The beginning of all trade and transport along the most European of all streams. Hörnli as a the undeveloped hill, and the biggest graveyard and biggest Schrebergarten in the region. Its location just on the border made it a site where all non-uses are being projected on: the dead and the dwarfs. Its seeming remoteness, located just on the border between Germany and Switzerland occupied it with blockages, which retrospectively seem like placeholders, keeping one of the most ideal locations in a state of waiting.
Waiting for what?
Housing on the Rhine. Access to the Rhine. One of the most beautiful landscapes of the Oberrhein are publically inaccessible, blocked from access by industrial harbors, chemical and pharmaceutical industry, private landownership, the dead and the flower beds. What scenarios of uses can you imagine for the last harbor on the Rhine, destined to be relocated, and the strangled green area, waiting to be awoken from century long sleep. With one side having the most beautiful view onto the last extension of the hills of the Schwarzwald, and the other side enjoying an elevated view onto Germany, Switzerland and France, unsurpassed in the region, shouldn‘t that location be made accessible to the public and released from the special-purpose uses of the dead, the dwarfs and the industrious?
Imagine the harbor moves out, imagine the graveyard at the Hörnli moves out, imagine the Schrebergärten leave their current location at the banks of the Rhine. Imagine coherent planning can cross the national boundaries between Switzerland and Germany. What will become of the area in the next 15, and in the next 25 years?