Heritage protection: Wakker Prize goes to Birsstadt association

An outdoor storage area on the Dreispitz in Münchenstein © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

The Swiss Heritage Society’s Wakker Prize 2024 has been awarded to the Birsstadt association. Ten municipalities in the Basel agglomeration have joined forces to address the spatial planning and building culture issues caused by uncoordinated growth.

The Swiss Heritage Society spoke of a “successful cross-municipal and cross-cantonal collaboration” in a press release on Tuesday. The Birsstadt association is taking care of the “proud architectural heritage”, including the industrial past, and is revitalising the renaturalised natural area along the River Birs, it said.

In 2018, the nine Basel municipalities of Aesch, Arlesheim, Birsfelden, Duggingen, Grellingen, Muttenz, Münchenstein, Pfeffingen and Reinach as well as the Solothurn municipality of Dornach joined forces in the Birsstadt association. The merger was born out of the conviction that the traces of uncoordinated and therefore negative spatial planning development could only be eliminated by working together.

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‘Successful repair’

According to the statement, three key elements contribute to the “successful repair of the agglomeration area”. These include the careful further development of industrial sites such as the rolling mill on the municipal border between Münchenstein and Arlesheim and the revitalised former bonded warehouse on the Dreispitz site on the cantonal border with Basel City.

Special mention is also made of projects to upgrade and renaturalise the landscape along the Birs, which has been badly affected by industrial development and the construction of motorways. The continuous Birspark landscape area has created an identity-forming recreational space that combines nature conservation, leisure use and transport space, the statement said.

Every year, the Swiss Heritage Society awards the Wakker Prize, worth CHF20,000 ($23,500), to a political community, organisation or association. The prize was first awarded in 1972 thanks to a bequest from the Geneva businessman Henri-Louis Wakker to the Swiss Heritage Society.

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