A modular creative village : The Basislager in Zurich

Take 135 containers - like shipping containers, but bigger - an imaginative architect, a creative insurance company, and a theatre director - and voila!  An uber-hip array of low-cost workspaces. Could that be an option for Lausanne?

Last week, we had the chance to visit the Basislager in Zurich. We met Marc Angst, the young architect who is very much at the origin of the project. Four years ago he had done some research about the temporary use of empty urban spaces for creative people. His idea : Make use of temporary empty urban areas, install container offices and rent them out at very low cost to artists, designers, entrepreneurs, photographers etc.

Model of the container as imagined by the architects.

It took less than two years to make that dream become reality, and today, the Basislager in Zurich is a succes : Its popular, fully booked, environmentally friendly, and a great place to make ideas happen and connect with like minded people. And even though the rents are low - 400 CHF/month for a 25m2 big container –the project is financially viable.

But to make this happen, several things needed to fit together :

A space

The first thing that needed to be found was a suitable site to place the containers. Marc got in touch with with Swiss Life, an insurance company that owned a property just a 15 minute tram ride from the central station of Zurich - convenient on foot or by bike, and well serviced. Swiss Life intended to build a new office building on what was at that time an empty field with lots of shrubs and weeds. But they knew that permanent construction would start in three years at best, and were quite keen to make their unused land pay for itself.

The building

The first idea: use old shipping containers. But shipping containers are noisy and highly sensitive to cold and heat unless insulated. And once insulated, they're uncomfortably tight and narrow and expensive. Not the best solution for work spaces that aim to be cheap but still high quality.

So the architect found a Swiss company that made fully customizable containers, like the ones used by construction companies as temporary offices. These could be purchased fully customised. The choice was to buy 135 unadorned but well insulated containers all in the same sizes that could be shipped on normal roads, and stacked horizontally and vertically. These containers had standard windows in the back and a front wall of glass - providing natural light and heat in the winter.
The stairs and the hallways were built with normal scaffolding pieces (that even provide shade during the hot summer months) to which elevators were added. "The key is to keep things as simple as possible by standardizing all the containers and providing the minimum, thus giving the tenants a lot of freedom to add extras to their taste" said the architect.

Infrastructure for water, waste water and electricity was already there, others things needed to be installed: Internet, of course, and a shared space for conferences, and lots of outdoor room for larger parties, as well as three-sided containers on every floor for barbecues, sitting and mingling with others.

General view of one of the building blocks of the Basislager.

The economics

The project was enabled by Swiss Life, that decided to buy the containers - over 7 million Swiss francs no less. But they knew that the container buildings could be readily moved elsewhere or – the worst case scenario – be sold.
To keep the rental costs low, only the basics were provided: electricity, heat, shared bathrooms, and shared internet. No running water in the units (only in the bathrooms, several of which also have showers), and the cleaning/waste was to be done by the tenants themselves. "A whole market has developed, in selling and buying services" Marc Anst enthused. Tenants provide their own lighting and add the floor and wall coverings to their taste. Most importantly: "Use everything you find on site" advised the architect – service roads, electricity cables, water pipes - everything you salvage saves you hundreds of thousands of francs.

A container ends up costing about 55'000 francs by the time you have factored in foundations, transport, insulation, access, fire-escapes, permitting, etc. The architect noted that it was important to use good materials - e.g. plaster walls on the inside so that humidity didn't accumulate and make the working conditions uncomfortable.

Finding the tenants

One additional condition of Swiss Life was that the construction would start only once the tenants were found. Luckily that went quite quickly thanks to the genius of the theatre director Laura Huonker. With her network of contacts in the artistic community, she was able to attract a rich diversity of musicians, painters, craftspeople, filmmakers, photographers, actors, etc. to the site through her efforts and word of mouth.

She was then also in charge of grouping the tenants : As for a marriage, she thought well about whom to put as a neighbour of whom.

Stairs and hallways built with normal scaffolding pieces.

Making it alive

The theatre director worked for a management company, and the management company ensured the containers were leased, rents paid, etc. One of the challenges with low-cost offices, was ensuring that people didn't rent them as spare offices, but as the offices they would come to daily so that the sense of community was built.

This has worked: we saw evidence of parties, and all the personalised additions to a space that make it feel lively and lived-in: plants, signs, a swimming pool, coloured lights, bicycles, etc.

One additional key factor : a lunch truck was installed that provided hot food not only to the site, but to other offices in the middle of all these containers.

The cantine of the Basislager.

Could this work for the HUB Lausanne?

We went to visit the Basislager because we wondered if it would be possible to install something similar in Lausanne, for example in the Quartier de Malley. We were impressed by the atmosphere, the low costs, the social live that emerged organically through the tenants.

Even if there were things we would do differently, and there are definitely things that we would do differently, we think that this could be an interesting option for Lausanne.

--- Caroline and Simon