Program: Exhibition/Installation
Client: Architekturwoche Basel
Status: Built
Location: Basel
Year: 2024

RESONANCE

‘The cave and later the temple were probably secret places. […] However, the cave soon became domestic, so it soon ceased to be secret, only to become uncanny later, at the time of the temples.’
(Vilem Flusser: Things and Unthings, 1993)

Archaeology // Explore
Built to protect nature, the water reservoir in Basel proves to be a monument to the fragile relationship that man has with his environment. We appropriate this artificial cave of the former extinguishing water basins and explore its resonant spaces. The abandoned and functionless infrastructure is archaeologically excavated, made visible again and set into vibration. The architecture itself becomes an instrument.

Sensor // Measure
Equipped with a multitude of sensors, we extend our senses and make the unknown and invisible tangible. Brightness, temperature, humidity, resistance and CO2 content are detected and measured. At the same time, movements, the growth of moss or the circulation of traffic in the car park are included in the measurements. The architecture converges into an amplifier for its environment and serves as a measuring instrument for research.

Actuator // Translate
The measured data and impulses are reflected back by media actuators inserted into the space in a mutually dependent feedback loop. The former extinguishing water basin becomes a lithophone and the starting point for the collective exploration of an unknown future. A laboratory of space, sensors, actuators and visitors is created. The background noise of the building is constantly retuned.

Organism // Interweaving
The reservoir is already strongly interwoven with its surroundings in an organic way via the sewers, pipes and ventilation ducts. We add a further level to this entanglement with the cabling of the sensors and actuators. The architecture exposes its innermost being and can be experienced as an organism in its various scales.

Human // Resonate
The human being becomes part of this complex, constantly and autonomously changing system. In analogy to the prehistoric people in the caves, the visitors seek out places of resonance and mark them. In this way, they can influence the behaviour of the organism and become active players of the instrument themselves. The space is brought into vibration and can be experienced synaesthetically in its entirety. In doing so, we collect traces of a process that we may not even be aware of today.

Future // Develop
The boundaries between science, art and architecture are blurring and forming the breeding ground for a transdisciplinary research project. We measure and feel, translate and understand, play and make music. Audiovisual works of art are created in the interaction between architects, artists, scientists, engineers and the space concieved as an instrument. Where archaeology looks back in time, architecture projects the future - they meet in the here and now and form more conscious futures.