Eco-Socialist Conservatism - The Cultural Conundrum of Basel



The Basel City Music Hall as it looks today and will look for another 20 years







The City Music Hall Project by Zaha HADID that the voters of Basel rejected on June 17, 2007






The city of Basel is proud of it's international image as a strongpoint of art and it is home to an internationally reknowned Music Academy. At the same time, this city, where two of the most important global players of the pharmaceutical industry, ROCHE and NOVARTIS, have their headquarters, is victim of a permanent loss of permanent residents which are able and/or willing to influence it's political fortunes. More to this, the city is the capital of one of the most tiny Cantons of Switzerland, Basel-Stadt, with a population of under 200,000 and it's socio-demographic structures shows a continuous trend towards old age and migrants.
Less than half of the inhabitants are active citizen, and the have clearly shown their political orientation toward socialism and ecology by electing parliament and a government which is dominated by the left and the (left-leaning) greens.
It is no wonder therefore that a project to replace the city music hall by a new building conceived by Zara Hadid has lost popular support in a vote on state subsidies for the construction site, with a more than 60 percent majority.
The people of Basel are used to be well served by their industry's corporate taxes but are not ready to invest in projects of cultural infrastructure.
The most intriguing feature of the phenomenon is the counterproductive behaviour of the representatives of the arts: there is no such thing as solidarity between art,
theater and music. The fatal blow was dealt to the project from within the art scene from a famous sculptor: Bettina Eichin, the author of the sitting statue of Helvetia on the Mittlere Rheinbrücke



Eichin, a fervent environmental activist, stated in a letter to the editor of the local newspaper "Basler Zeitung" that HADID's Casino would contribute to the warming of 3° Centigrade of the city atmosphere because of it's aluminium façade.

Those Basel citizen who did not like the architectural aspect of the project were pleased: finally somebody had explained to them that city concert halls contribute to gobal warming.