The Village
The Village – Final Review
May 27, 2025
Tuesday, May 27th, Final Review, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 08:00 – 18:30
Guests: Sébastien Marot, Myriam Marti, Grace Ndiritu
The Village – Studio Review 2
April 16, 2025
Dag von der Decken, Julius Baumanns, Yannick Angehrn
Wednesday, April 16th, Studio Review, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 09:00 – 18:00
Guests: Valentina Noce, Max Otto Zitzelsberger
The Village - Studio Review 1
March 12, 2025
Kartonfabrik, Ennenda, Landesarchiv Glarus
Wednesday, March 12th, Studio Review, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 10:00 – 18:00
Guests: Myriam Marti, Niels Olsen
The Village
Introduction 18 February 2025, 10 am
Ennenda, 2024
The continuous asphalt and endless basements of Oerlikon seal the ground, so that the summer heat cannot dissipate in the inferno of the contemporary urban environment. The city, with its concentration of wealth and scarcity of land is melting down; do the tensions and incipient violence that make the city exciting also contain the seeds of its ruin?
With multicentric societies reflected in its federal politics, Switzerland’s infrastructure and resources are more evenly spread over its terrain than in most countries. The rural still encompasses diverse economies that include industry, agriculture and tourism. Often, the villages and towns of the un-city have had a vibrant past, so that today one finds underused buildings and infrastructure that could become activated by new ideas for society. Contemporary approaches to planning usually encourage the gentrification and the suburbanisation of the rural. Instead, architects and their clients could be working to amplify and consolidate the lack of density, the slower pace of life and the possibility of more balanced ideas of settlement inherent in these places.
This semester we will work in the village of Ennenda, a place with a long history and a diverse legacy of buildings. While agriculture is very present in the village and its surroundings, factories that are part of supply chains within the Glarus valley, employ almost one thousand people. The village has empty and underused structures, but demand for new housing and workspace is typically addressed by demolition and replacement with generic models from the urban agglomeration. We will make projects that challenge these lazy assumptions and by engaging with the networks and histories that underly the village’s substance, demonstrating the enormous potential in repairing and adding to what already exists.
Introduction: 18 February 2025, 10:00 am, ONA E30
Site visit to Ennenda: 22 February 2022, details to be announced.
Construction and writing as integrated disciplines are included in this course.
FS 2025, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Lucia Bernini, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Yosuke Nakamoto
A Few Villages in France
Seminar Week: March 17–21, 2025
Saint-Géry, Dordogne
Eric Tabuchi & Nelly Monnier, Atlas des Régions Naturelles
And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play.
Émile Zola, The Earth
There exists in France an almost spiritual relationship to the land. It is, as Zola says, the origin and the depository for all life, and its correct management makes possible food and drink of a transcendent quality, made in the context of territories and buildings that are similarly embedded in their place. Talk of ‘la terre’ has long been the domain of nationalist nostalgia, but there also exist emergent practices that are reframing how our complex relationship to the land can better balance the demands of life and its environment.
We will visit people and places where food, drink, architecture and territory are being thought about in progressive and sustainable ways. We will visit new architecture that in its process and materialisation is startlingly fresh, and eat some meals where low environmental impact in their production is matched by vibrant and complex tastes, all part of an introduction to how villages and their territories are writing stories for the future.
The costs are approximately 750 to 1000 CHF including accommodation, transportation in France, dinners, entrances and reader.
The journey to France is not included.
Category D, 16 students
FS 2025, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Lucia Bernini, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Yosuke Nakamoto
Diploma HS 2025
The Accidental Gartenstadt
3 May 2025, Dübendorf
Imagine a place with a variety of buildings set within rich landscapes where you can walk, cycle, play football, grow fruit and vegetables, live and work. The easy way that interiors and exteriors relate, and the self-evident arrangement of public and private, suggests this place as a paradigm, yet it is never mentioned in those terms. Architecture and urban planning as they are conventionally defined play little part in the evident success of this place that can accommodate so much while making such modest demands, a place whose residents appear quite content.
Dübendorf is an accidental Gartenstadt, a place where gardens are big, and rents are low. Its industrial and agricultural areas, close to Stettbach station, are already being transformed into a typically dense Zurich agglomeration. We can optimistically regard this over-development as an expansion valve for the town, but if the modest scales and rich open spaces of the older parts of town are to remain, there will now have to be some thinking and planning done to sustain the positive spatial and economic qualities that are present today.
We will engage with this special place and work with its existing qualities to make a Dübendorf that can become more socially and physically sustainable. Our plans will consider how education can become a new, complementary programme for this settlement, something to reinforce and work alongside existing economies and communities. The main design phase of the project will involve the transformation and new construction of buildings and landscapes that imagine the future of this accidental Gartenstadt.
We will work with the Chair of Being Alive so that buildings and landscape are given an equivalence in our discussions. We will also collaborate with Newrope in three ‘rooms of entanglement’, workshops where content, process and place are considered in an expanded forum.
Preparation phase:
-learn how to do field work and to work effectively on site using a journal, making annotations, observing and drawing.
-production of legal codes and plans that identify areas of potential change within Dübendorf and feasibility studies that engage with the geological, vegetal, social and historical conditions of Dübendorf
Elaboration phase:
-development of specific design proposals that incorporate new programmes and ways of living for Dübendorf, using transformation and new constriction.
Diploma, HS 2025, ETH Zürich
Chair Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso,
Chair of Being Alive
Teresa Galí-Izard
Remoteness and Identity
Architecture in a Post-growth Society: Two Case-studies Around the Klausenpass
Lukas Nussbaumer
HS 2024 Remoteness and Identity
Since the start of the industrial revolution, the western social system has been built on constant growth. Growth in population, economic performance, technological capabilities, cultural output - no area of human life has been untouched by this dynamic.
But it can no longer be ignored that we are at a breaking point. The planetary boundaries have been reached or already exceeded in many areas. The climate crisis as well as the biodiversity crisis are both negative consequences of this system.
A change of course is therefore not only needed, but inevitable due to demographics. Demographic developments will radically transform the society we know. Even if it still seems to be a distant future in Switzerland at the moment, the population here will also start to shrink in a few decades, even in urban areas. This is already the case in many European countries, and there are also areas in Switzerland that have been shrinking for decades. The area around the Klausen Pass is just such an area.
This project examines two case studies on both sides of the Klausen Pass to find out what kind of architecture makes sense in a shrinking society. How can places be created that enable a sustainable form of growth and coexistence in such a location? On the Glarus side, a new scheme is proposed for the former woollen weaving mill in Rüti, while on the Uri side, an new approach is implemented in the former Gasthof St. Anton in Spiringen.
Such shrinking places have one advantage: the forces of the market are significantly weaker and projects that are not aimed at optimising profits also have a chance to thrive. There is an opportunity to utilise these places creatively through small interventions and make them usable for society.
The projects are characterised by the fact that they consist of a large number of small interventions that can be carried out without great expense over a longer period of time. If an intervention is a success, it can be built upon; if it is a failure, it can be reacted to. In this context, architecture is not understood as a project, but as a process.
Leonie Fock / Luckas Raabe / Deborah Schneider
HS 2024 Remoteness and Identity
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
A New Museum
Redesigning Museums
Re (Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat)
Paula Kiener / Samuel Giblin
FS 2023 Re (Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat)
Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat
Re form
Despite multiple historic transformations in the past, Altstetten Church today benefits from being protected (as a monument from demolition) and simultaneously being a protector for the community of the church and other minorities. Currently, outside these fortifying walls, the Neighborhood in Altstetten is witness to a lot of change and many of its current programs need to close or move out of the area. By intensifying the potential of the church, the hill behind Lindenplatz can be used as a carrier bag for what will be removed and demolished. In punctual interventions, chapter by chapter, the Church is altered to convene to these programs. Each adding new life to the existing yet underused spaces of the church, and thus inviting new people and communities inside it.
Lea Muttoni
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
Emanuel Pulfer / Ann Sophia Kirchhofer
HS 2021 Interim, forever
Zitrone Manegg
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
As the city of Zürich is growing, the industrial and publicly not accessible areas, such as the site of the Engrosmarket, are moving closer to the city center. How do we, in future, deal with such areas which are ideally situated for their main function as a distribution center but at the same time within immediate proximity to residential quarters?
By implementing regulating elements such as doors, stairs, lights, the site is transformed into an environment where public events such as concerts, flee markets, food festivals can take place at certain times during the day and week. These performative elements refer to existing elements found on the site allowing the Engrosmakert to function as a highly specialised machine for distributing fresh goods. Through re-interpreting these elements in a new way and repeated implementation, the Engrosmarket is being transformed allowing public functions to take place at certain times and thus be integrated in the network of the city.
Fiona Kuang / Linda Sjøqvist
FS 2021 Making Plans for Living Together, Zürich
Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque
Making Plans for Living
Ansgar Stadler / Philip Stöckler
HS 2020 Making Plans for Living, Zürich
Gawu, El Anatsui
Re-Use Ciba
The environment of a building is under continuous social, economic and technological change. What role does the construction of a building play in the process of these environmental changes? Do new usage requirements inevitably lead to a complete replacement of the building, or can they be converted to make them suitable for the new environment? Can CIBA’s existing welfare building from 1957 fin a changed form even play an innovative, identity-creating role in a newly developed quarter?
Observing the existing has pushed me to choose the new paradigm of a personal comfort-adaptive architecture thanks to which I have created a new art of participatory inhabitation. My project highlights the importance of adaptability and flexibility in design. The doctorands are free to shift, adjust and divide the spaces based on their personal needs through flexible partitions (i.e. layers and walls). In addition, the flexibility of the layers and the controlled / uncontrolled spaces allow the doctorands to regulate the thermal conditions within the entire building.
To a large extent, CIBA’s welfare building built in 1957 is left close to its original state, with small-scale interventions and adaptations. Innovation and research are part of CIBA’s welfare house’s identity – they have always been and will remain. The doctorand’s house aims to be a place where innovation and research can flourish, a doctorand’s house that is perfectly adaptable to the needs of the individual as well as of the community.
What is it worth?
Welche Heimat?
Petra Steinegger
HS 2019 Welche Heimat?
Society and the Image
Roma Brunner / Carmen Kempf
HS 2019 Society and the Image, Zürich
Download Booklet
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Public Building
Ling Xu / Kunqi Hou
FS 2019 Public Building, Zürich
La Maison du Peuple, Jean Prouvé
Clichy, 1938
Hidden Interiors
Viktor Lepik / Andrea Waldburger Diaz
HS 2018 Hidden Interiors, Zürich
Bürgerliche Wohnstube, Verlag Schneider Esslingen
1840
The Ideal City
Livia Notarangelo / Talissa Weder
FS 2018 The Ideal City, Spreitenbach
Großstadt, Otto Wagner
Wien, 1911
Describing Beauty
Jonas Sundberg
HS 2017 Describing Beauty, Zürich
Shang Vessel
China, 1100 BC
Structure and Society
Annika Bühler / Mengda Shi
FS 2017 Structure and Society, Zürich
Certosa del Galluzzo
Florenz, 1341
Social Structure
Camillo Fiorito
HS 2016 Social Structure, Graubünden
History & People
Graubünden
