Award Winning Architecture Showcase

The Real Estate Espresso Podcast

Award Winning Architecture Showcase

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Award Winning Architecture Showcase

Welcome to the Real Estate Espresso Podcast, your morning shot of what’s new in the world of real estate investing. I’m your host, Victor Menasce.

On today’s show we’re starting a new feature that we’ll be holding monthly on the podcast, and that’s where we’re going to be showcasing recently designed, award-winning projects, looking at some of the design elements that made these particular projects interesting.

On today’s show we’re talking about a wine warehouse conversion in Basel, Switzerland.

Now, I want to start with the reason that this project even matters. Only a very small percentage of existing buildings are candidates for conversion into another use. That is mostly to do with the shape of the building.

The conversion of a former co-op wine warehouse into 64 apartments was not only award-winning because it’s flashy. It was awarded because it demonstrates restraint, great judgment, and long-term thinking. These qualities are rare both in architecture and development, and they’re exactly what create.

This is an example of adaptive re-use done with a fiscal mindset. The problem with properties that start as industrial is that they are absolutely the wrong shape for residential. Apartments need natural light for living spaces and bedrooms. Kitchens, hallways, closets, bathrooms, laundry can all be on the interior, but you can only have so much space in the core of the building before it becomes problematic.

Most redevelopment projects start with the question, “What can we make this look like?” This one started with a better question: “What do we already have that’s valuable?” The existing warehouse offered three things that are very expensive to recreate today.

Number one, it’s a structurally robust building. Number two, generous floor-to-floor ceiling heights. And number three, material integrity.

Instead of treating these as obstacles, the design team treated them as assets. From an investor and a developer standpoint, that’s definitely the right instinct. When you preserve structure, you preserve embodied capital. Demolition is not neutral. It destroys value that somebody already paid for, both financially and environmentally.

This project made the decision to work with the existing building, not against it. Everything flows from that choice.

One of the strongest design decisions was to let the original structural grid dictate the apartment layouts. Now, that sounds obvious, but it’s rarely done well. Too often, adaptive reuse projects force residential unit plans into industrial shells that were never meant for them. The result is awkward circulation, compromised rooms, excessive structural intervention, and all of that increases both the cost and the risk.

Here, the regular warehouse bays become the rhythm of the building. Apartments align cleanly with the existing structure. The load paths remain consistent, and any variations are selective and precise. That clarity is not just architectural, it’s economic. Fewer structural changes mean fewer surprises during construction. That means a tighter schedule and a more profitable outcome. The awards juries see architectural honesty, and developers should see executional discipline.

This project preserved the ceiling heights as one of the project’s main strengths. They create apartments that feel generous without increasing the square footage. That matters. High ceilings allow flexibility. Units can evolve. They make the layout of the mechanical and plumbing systems easier to achieve, simply by allocating a larger volume to the floors. Uses of the various rooms can change, and leaving residents both light and air differently. These are qualities that protect the building’s relevance across decades — not just at lease-up. That’s how you future-proof buildings.

Additionally, the treatment of existing materials stands out. The masonry, the concrete, the steel, these structural elements are exposed where appropriate, but they’re not fetishized. It’s not industrial chic for Instagram. It’s just straightforward, honest: here’s the structure. Surfaces are repaired, they’re clean, they’re well painted. The new elements are introduced — timber, plaster — and these refined materials sit alongside the old structure without competing with it.

That matters because the buildings that rely on visual tricks tend to age quickly. Buildings that respect their materials tend to age easily.

Warehouses are deep, and deep buildings are hard to reuse as residential. The solution here was not to overcut the structure or dramatically alter the facade. Instead, daylight is brought in through a combination of different openings. There’s the existing apertures, but then they introduced well-proportioned internal light wells. These moves are not particularly aggressive, but they bring light into where it’s needed. The result is apartments that feel calm and grounded but not compromised. The exterior remains coherent. The interior works as housing, and the balance is difficult to achieve, but it’s exactly why this project got recognized.

From the street the building still looks like part of the city’s industrial fabric, and that’s intentional. This particular conversion doesn’t erase history, it extends it. The entrances are clear, they’re dignified. The ground-level conditions are well resolved. The building contributes to the neighborhood without demanding a ton of attention. It’s the kind of urban continuity that’s often undervalued, but it matters enormously for political support, for community acceptance, and for long-term stability.

By keeping the steel structure, by protecting and preserving the embodied materials, it shortens construction timelines, but it creates a building that people will respect and care for.

This particular conversion deserves its award because it reflects maturity. It shows that good housing doesn’t require a ton of novelty; it just requires good judgment. For the developers and for the capital partners, sometimes the best projects come from doing less and also doing it better. When you respect the structure, the context, the material reality, you reduce the risk and you create lasting value. So there’s no question this kind of project will make sense decades from now.

If you want to see more about this fascinating project, click on the link in the show notes. We’ll take you to some images of the project so you can see exactly what we’re talking about.

As you think about that, have an awesome rest of your day. Go make some great things happen. We’ll talk to you again tomorrow.

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