If you walk along Baslerstrasse towards the city centre you eventually encounter a brown fence on your right-hand side that accompanies you for 250 meters. When it takes a perpendicular turn to the right we have reached the street corner of Baslerstrasse and Herdernstrasse.
The rusty steal panels of the fence which reach 2.5m of height are not placed ‘next to each other’ but rather ‘behind each other’ offering the pedestrians a glimpse of what’s on the other side of the fence: a square made of concrete like the one we are standing on right now, two small cube-like buildings that meet the fence on the side of Herdernstrasse and a large building in the back.
If you look up over the fence you realise what unique building it is surrounding: the Letzigrund stadium. A building that looms large from afar with its oval-shape room and spotlight on top but almost seems hidden when standing by the fence (depending on the angle).
At the crossroad of Baslerstrasse/Herdernstrasse (a bit to the left) is entrance ‘B’. A small square and pavement lead the visitor towards it – a quiet place on weekdays, a tohubohu where thousands of people gather on weekends.
Because the stadium has been built a few meters into the ground – it seems as if it sunk into it, being hidden by the fence – it is very well embedded in the surroundings even though it covers such a vast space. It is located on the border of Kreis 4 and Kreis 9 as well as between a residential and an industrial area and creates a smooth transition of the two.
The stadium was built by Bétrix & Consolascio Architekten BSA / Frei & Ehrensperger Architekten BSA in 2007 after the old one had been demolished.
