Switzerland’s longest natural pool planned in Basel
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
Switzerland’s longest natural pool planned in Basel
The Christoph Merian Foundation (CMS) wants to build the longest natural swimming pool in Switzerland on the Dreispitz site in Münchenstein, Basel. The 170-metre-long “track pool” is set to open in 2027 on a former railway ramp, CMS said on Thursday.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The current railway track is located right next to Freilagerplatz, where the Kunsthaus Baselland, the House of Electronic Arts and the FHNW Academy of Art and Design are located. The railway ramp leads to a tunnel. This will be sealed for the 5.2 metre wide natural swimming pool.
Apart from that, the main focus will be on building within the existing structure, the two architects Noël Picco and Lukas Stadelmann explained to the media. Instead of demolishing the massive Federal Railways walls next to the railway track, they will form the pool basin in future.
+ Taking a cool dip in the archives
The sloping ramp makes it possible to divide the natural pool into zones with different depths. The upper, shallow part is to become a paddling pool. This will be followed by a plant pond, a swimming pool and finally a 100-metre sports pool, the architects from Malheur & Fortuna explained. The swimming area of the pool will be between two and 4.5 metres deep.
The swimming section of the pool will be fenced off, while the paddling area will be freely available to families. As the owner of the site and the facility, CMS intends to hand over responsibility for operation to a suitable organisation.
The investment costs for the natural swimming pool amount to CHF8.8 million ($11.2 million). Of this, CMS is assuming CHF4.8 million, director Baschi Dürr said. The Frank and Alma Probst Foundation, the umbrella foundation of CMS, is contributing a further CHF3 million. The foundation intends to organise third-party funding for the remaining million.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
External Content
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.