History

Burckhardt+Partner was founded in 1951, but the company’s interesting history actually reaches back much further into the past and is tied to some prominent architects from Basel. Melchior Berri-Burckhardt (1801-1854) is considered the founding father of Burckhardt+Partner.

Berri was an important architect, who as a master significantly influenced the late classical period of Swiss architecture in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. Arnold Böcklin called Berri the only artist among the Swiss architects of that age. The Augustinergasse museum, the Rosenthal park burial chapel, the old Riehen town hall, and the old letter boxes at Schöneck and at the Spalentor with the Basler Dybli - also designed by Melchior Berri - are important witnesses to the art of his architecture. When Berri died in 1854, his widow, Margaretha Salome Burckhardt, Jacob Burckhardt’s oldest sister, continued to run the architecture offices and the construction business with the help of its closest employee, Carl Heinrich Lendorff, an architecture and master builder from Karlruhe, Germany.

The architects Emanuel La Roche-Heusler and Adolf Benedikt Staeheli-de Goumois took over Berri’s architecture offices at the beginning of the 1890s.

Emanuel La Roche (1863-1922) was the primary director of the new company, La Roche, Staehelin & Cie. La Roche is considered one the leading masters of the neo-Baroque style in Basel. He had received a broad education completing an apprenticeship as a stonemason in Basel and sculptor in Strasbourg before taking up architectural studies at the Stuttgart Polytechnikum. By invitation, he moved to Florence in 1887, where he collaborated on Jacob Burckhardt’s monumental work, Architecture in Tuscany.

La Roche, Staehelin & Cie. was taken over by the architects and builders Burckhardt, Wenk & Cie. in 1928. Karl August Burckhardt was one of the partners from 1910 to 1951. Together with his son, Martin H. Burckhardt, and Karl Eckert, Karl August Burckhardt founded Burckhardt Architekten SIA when he was 71 years old.

The company benefited from the long experience and contacts of the senior partner, the spirit of the younger team members, and an emerging economic boom. Burckhardt Architekten SIA took its initial steps in the construction of laboratory and research buildings as early as 1954 and since then has evolved into one of Switzerland’s leading architecture and general planning companies with offices in Basel, Berne, Geneva, Lausanne Zurich and Grenzach-Wyhlen, Germany. Burckhardt+Partner were reorganized as a joint-stock company in 1981. The commercial success of the company continues to ensure i enterprise is closely held by its management team.