There is no other place of comparable size where one can experience local and global building cultures side by side the way one can in Basel with its trinational urban space in Switzerland, Germany, and France. The local stars Herzog & de Meuron and Diener & Diener have long been active internationally. And building sponsors like Vitra, Novartis, and Beyeler have commissioned – and continue to commission – buildings by Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando, Sanaa (Kazuyo Sejima/Ryue Nishizawa), Alvaro Siza, Renzo Piano, and others. In its fourth, expanded edition – with 44 new projects (for a total of 156) – the Architectural Guide Basel highlights the immediate present. But it also attempts to trace the development that this vital architecture scene has experienced since 1980. An entire double page is devoted to each project. The classification of the buildings by neighbourhood and zone, organized in thirteen chapters and presented in thirteen clearly laid out maps, is designed to facilitate exploration. All tram connections and addresses have been updated in the course of preparing this new edition.

Lutz Windhöfel, PhD history of architecture