The roof of the former Post Operations Building served as the starting point for a site-specific performance within the framework of the Architecture Dialogues. At its core was the striking staircase structure, understood as an architectural transitional space between levels, functions, and perspectives. The performance drew on deeply embedded bodily knowledge associated with staircases and deliberately disrupted it through unfamiliar modes of movement.
An intermediate platform overlooking Basel created a sense of distance and openness that directly informed the movement. Light, wind, materiality, and handrails became active elements within the choreographic process. The specific spatial configuration of the building allowed the audience to experience multiple, equally valid perspectives: views from above and below, as well as interior and exterior viewpoints onto the staircase. In this way, the architecture functioned as a perceptual apparatus, dissolving the conventional frontal stage situation.
Within the performance, long-developed choreographic principles converged, including “Forward & Rewind,” the use of internal and external anchor points, geometric visualizations, and the deliberate shifting of gravitational relationships. The Post Operations Building thus became legible as a space for thinking and movement, in which architecture, body, and perception enter into a dialogical exchange.
