Remoteness and Identity
Remoteness and Identity - Studio Review 1
October 16, 2024
Wednesday, October 16th, Studio Review, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 09:30 – 17:00
Guest: Sophie von Einsiedel
Remoteness and Identity
Introduction 17 September 2024, 10am
Klausenpass, August 2024
You don’t just ‘go for a walk’ in Canada. Setting off north from Montreal, the last settlements soon recede into the distance and eventually you reach the North Pole; it is a harsh one-way journey. Similarly, a trip north in Britain ultimately encounters, dead-end, the North Sea. Switzerland, on the other hand, is in the middle of the European landmass. Traversing even the most exposed alpine pass leads, before too long, to inhabited lands. The image and the instrumentalising of mountains, alps, and passes lies at the root of Switzerland’s identity, economy and history, for the land has long been a crossroads for goods and people. Before too long, those who choose to stay, or who are left behind, become Swiss.
Lately, Swiss architecture has become enmeshed in densifying cities and suburbs, making concentrated centres, with little attention being paid to its counterpart: the condition of remoteness. With the climate crisis comes a reassessment of many aspects of Swiss land management and construction, including agriculture and tourism, and these important contributors to the image and the economy of Switzerland play out amongst the mountains.
This semester we will re-evaluate the qualities and uses of remoteness at the Klausenpass, where, at 1948 metres, the cantons of Glarus and Uri overlap. We will study and map the social and the historical, getting to know the walkers, bikers, soldiers, and maintenance crews that are its visitors today. Informed by cartographies, handbooks, and chronicles we will go on to design intimate settlements – newly constructed places that with buildings and gardens provide a space for contemplation, assembly, and quiet industry in this special place at the top of Europe.
Introduction: 17 September 2024, 10:00 am, Klausenpass, Details to be announced
Construction and writing as integrated disciplines are included in this course
HS 2024, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Lucia Bernini, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Yosuke Nakamoto
Solitude
Seminar Week: October 20–25, 2024
Carved Stone, Aberdeenshire
Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.
The Creative Process, James Baldwin 1962
Baldwin equates creativity with solitude. Unbound by the strictures of society, the artist achieves their intellectual and spiritual independence through an equivalent social one. Today many of us feel that our inner and outer lives are cluttered by increasing quantities of unwanted matter, and perhaps we all need a little more time on our own to care for our physical and psychological health.
This semester we will go to Scotland, which unlike Switzerland, is not on the way to anywhere. Travelling North, human settlements become sparser and the character of the people, and their ways of life, respond to increasing measures of isolation. Beyond the northern land edge there are only islands, a sense of entering an unfamiliar place and of Europe left behind.
We will travel from Edinburgh to the Orkney Islands visiting people and places that have found ways to inhabit this harsh and beautiful land. We will visit small communities, reviving traditional forms of agriculture and craft, stopping by Hospitalfield, an artists’ residency. We will encounter sites of pagan and early Christian settlements that still speak to the liberating potential of solitude.
The costs are approximately 750 to 1000 CHF including Transportation, Accommodation, Guides and Reader.
Category D, 16 students
HS 2024, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Lucia Bernini, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Yosuke Nakamoto
IEA Lecture
All buildings are beautiful
October 9, 2024, 18:00
Adam Caruso
IEA Lecture Series HS 24
Practice What We Teach?
ETH Zürich, ONA, Fokushalle
Diploma HS 2024
Switzerland at a crossroads
Inferno (detail), chalk on masonite, 242 × 1219 cm, Tacita Dean, 2019
Control of the mountain passes is a historic source of Switzerland’s wealth and a powerful part of its national mythology. The passes were like switches that enabled individual cantons, and the whole federation, to be transformed from a fortress in the middle of Europe to a crossroads and marketplace at its centre. The passes were not only conduits for goods and services but have historically provided routes of migration between cantons and from beyond. Today with the main business of exchange displaced to tunnels deep within the mountains, the passes have become liberated, becoming places that encourage the informal, the peripheral and the uneconomic. It might not be easy to gain a foothold at 2000 metres, but there is a lot of air, stone, and sky there. With rising temperatures and receding icefields, the passes will become more accessible and habitable. In response to the diploma’s overarching question of ‘how will we live together’, our focus will be on those places away from the density of the centre that are necessary for society to be sustained and at ease with itself. The semester will start with a series of close readings of the living systems such as geology, vegetation, climate, and water of the Klausenpass, the things that make the atmosphere of the place and the material for future interventions. At 1948 metres the pass is where the cantons of Glarus and Uri meet. We will study and map the social and the historical, finding out who inhabited the pass before the walkers, bikers, soldiers, and maintenance crews that one meets there today. With cartographies, handbooks, and chronicles we will go on to design intimate settlements, newly constructed places that with buildings and gardens provide a space for contemplation, assembly, and quiet industry in this special place at the top of Europe.
Diploma, HS 2024, ETH Zürich
Chair Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Adam Caruso
Chair of Being Alive
Stefan Breit, Teresa Galí-Izard
A New Museum
By investigating the history of Glarus it became apparent that the textile industry played a significant role. Described as a pioneer work, the heroic and linear narrative still plays an important role in the canton’s identity today. Inspired by Ursula Le Guin’s concept of the carrier bag, a collection of stories was gathered describing that the Glarnerland isn’t only about the heydays of the industry but also about the possibilities it left behind.
One of the stories to be told is explained by Peter Jenny. In an interview, he mentioned that besides the industrial past, the Glarnerland has the quality of serving as a niche and by that attracting artists and other people involved in the cultural scene. After the textile industry came to a halt at the end of the 20th century, space became available that could be exploited. Examples such as the Palais Jaune in Diesbach in the 1980s or the still active Hollenstein in Ennenda illustrate what Jenny was referring to. Both places offered space to communities of people involved in the cultural sector where they could create their own environment, hidden from the rush in the cities.
Also, the Hänggiturm shows a straightforward way of representing the history of the textile past. Reapplying Ursula Le Guin’s method to analyze the building it became clear that the seemingly perfect appearance of the ensemble has more stories
to tell. The old, original factory building was supposed to serve as a base for the relocated Hänggiturm. As the building was a bit too narrow, it was demolished in the 90s and replaced by a new building with the same appearance. One irregularity that illustrates the orchestration is the large basement with an underground garage.
How does this “Niche” manifest itself?
The relocation of the post office that is currently inhabiting the base of the building offers the possibility to introduce a new use. As an extension of the existing cultural network, a residency for artists is implemented into the partly vacated building. Equipped with small appartements it allows the guests to inhabit the building for any length of time. The floor slab to the basement is cut open to unveil the orchestration and to provide the basement with natural light. The space once used as a garage is reframed into a Werkhalle, ready to be appropriated by the inhabitants, starting with a ceramic workshop in which tiles are produced which are installed on the upper floors. Inspired by the structure of the Chelsea Hotel
the ground floor is transformed into the new Lobby of the building. Together with the existing Anna Göldi Museum in the Hänggiturm, the lobby mediates between the public and the newly implemented internal world. The bar, reception, and collective kitchen on one hand welcome the public of Ennenda into the building and on the other hand, serve as an extension of the inhabitants’ living rooms, enabling a community to form around the residence. The seven existing bathrooms on the upper floors allow the plans to be altered into seven smaller apartments. Equipped with a bed and a small kitchen they provide a basis for the individual occupation of the inhabitants.
Pauline Gähwiler / Sacha Toupance
FS 2024 A New Museum
Redesigning Museums
Re (Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat)
Walzmühle
Yoann Miéville
FS 2023 Re (Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat)
Chloe Szwarc / Lukas Burger
FS 2023 Re (Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat)
Beverly Buchanan
Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat
Grenzsanität Brig – A museum at times
Lucia Bernini / Jonas Heller
HS 2022 Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat
The building of the Grenzsanität, designed by Heidi and Peter Wenger, is located at the train station in Brig. It was built in 1957 for the purpose of sanitary examinations of migrant workers passing the Swiss-Italian border. These examinations consisted of screenings for infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis by means of blood collection and radiologic exams. They were mandatory for people immigrating into Switzerland in order to obtain a work and residence permit.
The Grenzsanität is the architectural representation of the restrictive immigration policies established in the post-war years. Terms such as Saisonnierstatut, Überfremdung, Schwarzenbach-Initiative, or Grenzsanitätsdienst did not only shape the discourse about migration in those years, but affected the lives of thousands of people and families. The Grenzsanität is a Denkmal by means of which their story can be told.
Yoann Miéville / Valentin Popescu
HS 2022 Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat
Re form
Proposition for remodelling the protestant church in Hirzenbach, questioning the projected replacement building.
Sophie Kalwa / Philip Einhaus
FS 2022 Re form
Reformierte Kirche Wipkingen
IEA Lecture
You cannot take risks without failing
March 15, 2022, 18:00
Adam Caruso
IEA Lecture Series FS 22
One Building, Failure Is an Option
ETH Zürich, ONA, Fokushalle
Interim, forever
This project is a continuing dialog that aims at rendering visible the already existing, yet overlooked practices on site while re-attributing value to their process. It func- tions as an ongoing program of modification within the hotel framework that will better profit from the existing socio-cultural resources. A series of action and interven- tion varying in time and scale will generate a never-en- ding dialogue between the hotel and its actors in order to sustain change by fostering a light but durable change in the long term.
While remaining non-disruptive, a series of small-scale actions will reveal the value of the existing practices. With simple mean such as improving access to, or re- locating existing programs, light programmatic change will spread throughout the hotel while empowering their actors. New processes will be creating along the way al- lowing for the emergences of new relationship between the landmark and the social life of Zürich.
Zitrone Dietikon
Women Writing Architecture
Website Launch
June 30, 2021
The website womenwritingarchitecture.org was launched this week on June 30th. The new resource, an annotated bibliography of writing by women about architecture, is now publicly accessible to discover, browse and contribute to.
Making Plans for Living Together
Reuse of Waste into new use
Food is the one of the most central topics and relevant to climate change that we are facing, because it embedded in the daily life of everyone and closely connected with the big climate and ecological context. Its impact in the social, political and economical scale force us to rethink the way of dealing huge food circle. The future food production is about reproduction. Thousands tons of food waste is producing in the building site of HERDERN areal every day. Since all of the bio-waste can be easily treated with modern industry and reused as bio-fertiliser, it brings a huge economical potential to the fruit market of the site.
Productivity dances with public life together
The Architecture sets out to deliver an image of coming life of new Zurich, an inspiring environment in which to have a special experience of a sustainable civic life. The spirit of the proposal starts with the circumstance of the project as an important fruit and vegetables logistic centre at the old Zurich industrial area, where almost like a forgotten place of the city during the day, as nearly the activities of the site happens in the midnight. The new adding program aims to work with the existing logistic function of the site together, and bring the daily civic life into it.
Machines and garden
The design is conceived as an idealised vision of factory, bringing together production activities and landscape in an almost Arcadian composition of machines and gardens. To largely respect the existing program of the site, not to obstacle the current use, the new intervention is proposed to sit on the old building. Logistic space of upper floor of existing building will be incorporated into a new arrangement with productive machines in between, where old construction will be continued and reinforced. A productive public garden will occupy the whole top floor with new roof structure. The workers at the site will be the beneficial owner of the new interventions, since the waste of the existing site is the main source of the upper production, which makes profit for the both sides. The public will see in the factory an interconnected program that delivering a big image of living being in the every phase of life circle in a symbiotic garden around. The Garden is proposed to connect the existing public activities in the Brache along the Limmat river, and to be a destination and a meeting point for citizens as the new city takes shape slowly around it.
Jan Schweizer / Yiran Zhang
FS 2021 Making Plans for Living Together, Zürich
Making Plans for Living
Cave Paintings, 25000 BCE until today
Live: What is Next?
Seminar week 19–23 October 2020
A few semesters ago the studio tentatively made moves towards modernism. The evident failure of architecture to address the imbalance of contemporary life provided the motivation to look again at the more ideological and programmatic promises of modernism, particularly the second wave of the 60s and 70s, whose discourses were broadened to encompass themes of gender, the legacies of empire and the growing imbalances in our environment. The consumer driven economy and its insatiable consumption of precious resources is not sustainable, and the desires it claims to fill can never be satisfied. We need to shift our attention to things that give us purpose and happiness. What should we be doing, and how can we have fulfilling lives?
From our new home in Zürich Oerlikon we will meet and debate, both in person and on Zoom, a wide range of figures who are challenging the status quo of technique, economics and politics. We will both declare our existence to the wider world and also call for participation from beyond the limits of academia. The idea is that this intense week of research and outreach will supplement the ongoing themes of the studio, forming the basis of an interactive screen based journal and a special edition reader.
For the week we are collaborating with the Architecture Foundation, who is presenting and streaming the discussions throughout the week and who makes them accessible to rewatch on their YouTube channel.
HS 2020, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
What is it worth?
Society and the Image
Public Building
Antonio Corte Real e Brito Correia / Erich Schäli / Alan Pülz
FS 2019 Public Building, Zürich
The Manhattan Transcripts, Bernard Tschumi
New York City, 1981
Hidden Interiors
Turi Colque Lajo / Tanja Kern
HS 2018 Hidden Interiors, Zürich
Villa Medici, Leon Battista Alberti
Fiesole, 1457
The Ideal City
Alessandro Kuhn
FS 2018 The Ideal City, Spreitenbach
Reconstruction of the European City, Rob Krier
South Friedrichstadt Berlin, 1977
Describing Beauty
Marc Küttel
HS 2017 Describing Beauty, Zürich
Untitled (Roma), Cy Twombly
1959
Structure and Society
Annika Bühler / Mengda Shi
FS 2017 Structure and Society, Zürich
Union Carbide, Roche and Dinkerloo
Connecticut, 1982
Social Structure
Benjamin Sjöberg / Magnus Garvoll
HS 2016 Social Structure, Graubünden
Geology & Landscape
Graubünden
