The creator of the villa at Hirzbodenweg 95 was Otto Burckhardt-Boeringer (1872-1952), one of the last architects who still contributed significantly to the planning of the Basle cityscape before the First World War. Almost thirty years younger than his colleague Eduard Vischer-Sarasin, he came into the world in 1872, two years after the latter had opened his bureau. However, as the son of the public prosecutor and later a member of the governing council, Dr. Johann Jacob Burckhardt-Iselin, he came from the same stratum of Basle society, and like him, his work was strongly influenced by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Before his studies in the French capital, and after his baccalaureate from the then Oberen Realschule (later the Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliches Gymnasium), Otto Burckhardt had attended the drawing and painting courses of Fritz Schider in Basle and heard Jacob Burckhardt’s history-of-art lectures. He laid the foundation stone for his professional ability as an employee of Charles Meves in Paris, one of the leading French architects of the 19th century. Duly prepared after a long study trip to Germany, France, Italy and Spain, at 29 he established himself permanently in Basle, where, in 1901, together with his friend Rudolf Suter (1871-1932), he founded the architectural firm Suter & Burckhardt. The two partners happily complemented each other.  While Rudolf Suters’ mind was more oriented towards the practical and functional side of the work, Otto Burckhardt’s strengths lay in the artistic side, and so the architectural design of the villa in Hirzbogenweg, which was one of its first contracts given to the young bureau, is probably rightly considered as his work. It could not have been imagined at the time that his first work would, 57 years later, become the residence of Paul Simonius-Vischer, a cousin of his wife, the daughter of Charles Boeringer and Adele Simonius. The architect association Suter & Burckhardt quickly assumed a leading position in the Basle construction industry. Already after a few years, besides private residences, it was entrusted with important and responsible jobs from major firms, banks, insurance companies and industrial companies. The building of the cemetery at Hörnli, whose design was of special concern to Otto Burckhardt, was also their work, and there, the latter was able to express his artistic talent most beautifully.  They also proved themselves in the restoration of historical buildings, which Otto Burckhardt carried out with admirable empathy and masterly assurance of style. When he retired from active work in 1945, he did so with the knowledge, with a sense of deep responsibility, that he had significantly contributed to the structural development of Basle. However, he did not conceal from himself that in the period after the Second World War, a mainly technically oriented, unemotional way of looking at things had gained increasing importance, which left less and less room for the movement oriented towards the beauty of old architecture that he represented. On 29 April 1952, seven months before his 80th birthday, a cardiac insufficiency put an end to the life of this personality so inspired by the spirit of high culture.