Townhouse 1926, Birsfelden – restrained Swiss interwar architecture |
Location: Switzerland, Basel region |Area: 180 sqm |
Status: completed |
Birsfelden is a municipality on the right bank of the Birs, south of the Rhine – historically shaped in the 19th century as Basel’s residential hinterland. The area still retains telling traces of that period of urban growth: a workers’ housing ensemble from 1905–1907, set on narrow, elongated plots and finished with carefully handled Heimatstil details (timber ornament, the steady rhythm of dormers, a shared gable). Nearby, there is also a rare relic of 19th-century workers’ housing: a Mietskaserne from 1864, with access galleries (Laubengang) and shared toilets at the end of the corridor.
Szawrot Design designed the interiors of a 1926 residential building – slightly later, yet still rooted in the same logic: compact, economical suburban architecture where proportion and light do more than decoration. The project took the interwar discipline of form and scale as its point of departure, keeping new interventions quiet and legible.
The ground floor was redesigned from scratch: two separate rooms and a narrow, enclosed kitchen were replaced with a single, coherent living zone – a fireplace living room, with the kitchen opened to the living and dining areas. The first and second floors were re-planned to accommodate two additional bathrooms and private rooms for a large family. A key objective throughout was the preservation and restoration of original elements: timber wall panelling, doors, and the staircase.
In the private quarters, that restraint is deliberately offset by colour and pattern – most clearly through bold wallpapers. A small guest WC features a classic William Morris print, while the children’s bathroom introduces a more playful note with a gold-and-pink monkey motif.
