Solothurn

St. Josef

Building data

Denomination | Roman Catholic
Building type | Monastery
Year of construction | 1650 around
Architect | not specified
Town, canton | Solothurn, SO
Street address | Baselstrasse 21
GPS | 47.210535, 7.542608
Google Maps | Swisstopo

Reuse

Year of reuse | 1979 | 2001
Ownership | Foundation
Building interventions | Transformation
Form of use | Third-party use
Type of use | Culture
Brief information | Used as the ‘Haus der Kunst’ (contemporary art gallery).
Further information | see below

Status of information

Entry created | 2015/08
Entry last updated | 2017/08

Further information

St Joseph’s Convent (the foundation stone of which was laid in 1644) had to make way, between 1962 and 1964, for a new building designed by the architects Werner Studer and Walter Sträuble. Until 2005, the convent was home to a community of nuns belonging to the Franciscan Order. Since then, the secular institute of the Scalabrinian Missionaries, founded in 1961 in Solothurn, has been using the convent buildings. The community had already moved into part of the newly built convent in 1997. The convent church, which had been deconsecrated, was transferred in 1979 to the ‘Foundation of the Former Church of St Joseph’s Convent’. For several years, it served as a studio for the Solothurn artist Schang Hutter. Since 2002, it has housed the ‘Saint Joseph House of the Arts’, a contemporary art gallery.

Web links

Switzerland’s Architectural Heritage online
Helvetia Sacra
Haus der Kunst