Municipal fire brigade Basel
Conversion, earthquake resistance measures and seismic isolation
Basel, Switzerland
2007-2008
Fire
brigade.
Overview
Municipal fire brigade Basel
Municipal fire brigade Basel
Client
Hochbau- und Planungsamt Basel Stadt, Switzerland
Architecture
Reto Zimmermann, Basel, Switzerland
Overall direction
ZPF Ingenieure AG, Basel, Switzerland
Team ZPF
Antje Käser Wassmer, Alfred Schläpfer, Caroline Wiesbrock, Andreas Zachmann
Publications
In principle, severe earthquakes are to be expected in the Basel region because in terms of plate tectonics, Germany and France are drifting apart along the Rhine Rift. In the event of a catastrophe, the Basel City Fire Service's main building is one of the crucial structures that must remain operational. With a 44 x 15 m footprint, this building was built in 1943 as a reinforced-concrete structure, without taking the risk of earthquakes into account.
The parking garage for the emergency vehicles is on the ground floor, with eleven doors in each of the two long facades, while the three upper floors accommodate offices, sleeping quarters, common rooms and other fire service rooms. The building's vertical loads are transferred by means of 24 concrete columns on the ground floor, where there are hardly any horizontal reinforcing elements.
Building without earthquake resistance measures
Seismically isolated building
Earthquake-resistance measures were already considered in the 1990s, but due to financial restrictions, these were not realised until 2007. The building was decoupled from seismic motion, so as to meet the earthquake requirements of buildings in category III. In order to guarantee that the building could move independently, all rigid connections to the neighbouring buildings and to the ground were eliminated by cutting through the building on the underground floor and placing it on bearings, then sawing out a gap between this building and the two neighbouring ones.
Test of the bearings for the fire brigade
This fire station is the first seismically decoupled building in Switzerland.