1. We visited the Vitra Design Museum which was presenting a retrospective of architect Louis Kahn. As it turns out, the Vitra Design Museum is not in Switzerland but in Weil am Rhein, Germany.*
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| Main building designed by Frank Gehry |
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| Claes Oldenburg sculpture |
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| Cafe, store, and Vitra showroom designed by Herzog & de Meuron |
2. In a Frank Gehry state of mind, we went to the corporate campus of Novartis to see its Gehry building. Unfortunately, the campus is only open for tours on Saturday mornings, and we were there a few hours too late. We could only see a tiny fraction of the building from the street.
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| There it is - between the two trees on the right |
3. We rode a ferry across the Rhine a couple of times. The ferry is attached to a cable that spans the river and is powered only by the current.
4. We made good use of our public transit card. Kevin mastered the streetcar and bus routes!
5. We visited an old city gate, which was inaccessible and almost completely covered with scaffolding. Oh well.
6. We learned of another section of Art Basel called "Parcours" consisting of various sculptures and installations placed in unusual spaces (schools, restaurants, retail shops) in a historical area of the city. Our favorite work was by Martin Walde entitled Choice, an interactive piece in which a wax figure sits in near-total darkness. As the viewer walks through the space, a series of infrared lights is triggered and the heat generated from the lights will ultimately melt the wax figure unless the viewer continues walking thereby switching off the lights.
We climbed four flights of stairs to the attic of a school to view a video work by Lisa Oppenheim entitled Smoke. It was worth it.
7. Lastly, we enjoyed a beer at a bar called Union. Almost every surface is covered in copper.
*Our flight home departed from Basel's EuroAirport, which is located in France, not Switzerland. That makes two countries accidentally visited on this trip!
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