Basel: Housing for 650 people is being built on Walkeweg
Affordable apartments for 650 people, a school with kindergarten, and a neighborhood square are to be built on the Walkeweg site in Basel. The legal planning basis for this has now been created.
The six-hectare Walkeweg site belongs to the canton of Basel-Stadt and the SBB. It is currently home to allotment gardens, but these will have to make way for residential development from the end of 2020. The site, which is in the immediate vicinity of Dreispitz, the Wolf site and Irène-Zurkinden-Platz, where development projects are also pending, is to provide affordable housing for around 650 people.
The government council has approved the second-stage development plan, which is based on the design of the planning team Camponovo Baumgartner Architekten, Extra Landschaftsarchitekten, Edelmann Energie and Dencity, which emerged as the winner of a two-stage study contract in 2018.
Most of the planned buildings will be four stories high and will have exterior staircases, arcades and open verandas. The development will also include an elementary school with kindergarten and day care facilities, a neighborhood square, and generous natural areas with a network of footpaths. A park is planned along the track curve in the east.
The allotments currently still located on the site will be abolished at the end of 2020, at which time the ground will be remediated. According to a statement by the canton of Basel-Stadt, construction of the first residential buildings is scheduled to start in 2023; the first apartments should be ready for occupancy in 2025. In November 2020, the architectural competition for the planned elementary school including kindergarten and day structure has been launched. (ah)
