Zurich Monuments
Zurich Monuments
Introduction 17 February 2026, 10 am
I try to make a new kind of monument. A precarious monument. A monument for a limited time. I make monuments for philosophers because they have something to say today. Philosophers can give the courage to think, the pleasure to reflect. I like the strong sense in philosophical writings, the questions about human existence and how humans can think. I like full-time thinking.
MONUMENTS, Thomas Hirschhorn 2003
While rooted in the ideas of Deleuze, Spinoza, Bataille and Gramsci, Thomas Hirschhorn’s Monuments are not didactic or elitist. Through an extensive and complex process of ‘fieldwork’ the artist searches out fertile situations and willing accomplices that enable his Monuments to profoundly take root, becoming places of care, exchange and learning. The process of their planning, construction, and activation transforms all who encounter them, most of all the artist himself.
This semester we will use the example of Hirschhorn alongside the similarly rich and engaged practices of Group Material, who were active in the United States between 1979 and 1996, and ruangrupa, who have been working as artists, curators and activists in Indonesia since 2000. We will develop architectures that engage contemporary Zurich and its people, bringing a broad idea of learning into direct contact with people’s everyday lives. On sites already occupied by living and working we will design small and precise new buildings that add to and disrupt existing spaces and uses. A kind of schoolhouse, that despite its small scale and a certain precarity, through its formal precision and ability to connect and communicate, has the quality of being a new kind of monument in the city.
The semester will be arranged as a clear and continuous process where research is seamless with design, where individual work runs parallel to group work, where the urban is considered alongside the full scale. Our journey will be accompanied by friends and guests who will become part of the journey. We hope you will join us.
Construction and writing as integrated disciplines are included in this course.
Introduction: 17 February 2026, 10:00 am, ONA E30
FS 2026, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Lucia Bernini, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Florian Kilian Jaritz
Magic Numbers
Seminar Week: March 15–19, 2026

Dominican House, Simone and Lucien Kroll 1975
Proportions, systems, and numbers have long been used in architecture to embody ideas and to invoke spirits and gods. In the 20th, nowhere has this connection between numbers and meaning been so strong as in the Low Countries, where mysticism, modernism and structuralism were deployed to embody ideas of efficiency, performance, social and spiritual emancipation. We will go on a quest through the Netherlands and Belgium in search of the magic numbers. We will visit a monastery by Hans van der Laan, an orphanage by Aldo van Eyck, an insurance headquarters by Herman Hertzberger and
participatory housing by Simone and Lucien Kroll. As well as experiencing these landmarks of 20th century architecture we will also meet contemporary practitioners to see what the legacy of these ideas are today.
The costs are 501–750 CHF, including accommodation,local transportation by car, two dinners, entrances and the reader.
Category C, 16 students
FS 2026, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Lucia Bernini, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Florian Kilian Jaritz
The Pleasure in Small Things
Final Discussions & Exhibition
December 16, 2025
Tuesday, December 16th, Exhibition & Discussions, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 08:00 – 19:00
Guests: Monster Chetwynd, Pierre Chèvremont, Tuukka Laurila, Nora Walter
Restaging – Reimagining: Exhibition and Discussions
October 15, 2025
Wednesday, October 15th, Exhibition & Discussions, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 10:00 – 17:00
Diploma FS 2026
Architecture School
The FAU (1969) designed by Vilanova Artigas was an expression of the radical Paulista architecture school of the 1960s, and Gund Hall (1972) designed by John Andrews had similar grand ambitions. The HIL building tells a very different story, accidentally becoming the department of architecture when the ETH administration decided it was best to remove architecture students from the city centre where they had become too involved in the youth protests of the 1970s. The ugly brown building has never been much of an expression of our school’s desires.
This semester we will use the diploma project to explore how the HIL building can be re-structured to be a base for the department, and a more hospitable and sustainable place to meet and work. Since it is unlikely that the present labyrinth could be improved by enlargement, our efforts will be to concentrate the existing, making it lighter, clearer and more flexible.
We will also study examples of more dispersed and non-institutional learning, like Anna Halprin’s Dance Deck and Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, places that demonstrate how learning can be more flexible and responsive to both its students and to ever changing educational contexts. We will combine the idea of a central base with mutable cells, spaces in and around the city that can more closely engage with the diverse people and situations of Zurich and beyond. By working both with the centre and the non-centre, perhaps we can start to imagine an architecture school fit for the 21st century.
We will continue to collaborate with Newrope in three ‘rooms of entanglement’, workshops where content, process and place are considered in an expanded forum.
Preparation phase:
-study of alternative places of education and the preparation of journals that compile the sites, programmes and central qualities of these open and more flexible schools.
-preparation of glossaries of learning.
-preparation of atlas of the HIL building and of possible non-central sites for the future department of architecture.
Elaboration phase:
-development of specific design proposals that incorporate new programmes and ideas of learning for the new department of architecture.
Diploma, FS 2026, ETH Zürich
Chair Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso
Newrope
Ellena Ehrl, Freek Persyn
Lecture MCBA Lausanne
What is it worth?
October 1, 2025, 18:30

Lycée Hôtelier de Lille, Caruso St John Architects 2011–2016
Adam Caruso
Lecture for the Conférence Espaces communs
Musée Cantonale des Beaux-Arts Lausanne, Auditorium
More information & registration
Diploma FS 2025
Diploma HS 2024
The logbook ‘Klausenpass: Between two distinct valleys’ was created during the research phase on the topic ‘Switzerland at a Crossroads’ in the Klausenpass region. It focused on the similarities and differ- ences between the Schächental and Glarnertal. With several interviews, we explored the infrastructure in the landscape, living systems and the migration to the centres.
The resulting project ‘The Glarus Alps Battery with Algae Cultivation’ deals with the question of how existing infrastructure systems, vacant buildings and agriculture can be used to create a post-fossil production and at the same time a qualitative place with added value for the local population with just a few tweaks.
The Linth-Limmern pumped storage power plant produces energy using hydropower. The power plant network makes it possible to collect turbid water and pump it back up when the energy price is low in order to generate energy again. In addition to the high-Alpine Muttsee and Limmernsee reservoirs, there are the Tierfehd and Linthal compensating reservoirs in the valley. These are monofunctional con- crete reservoirs, which are fenced in and offer no added value.
After the collapse of the textile industry, the valley is characterised by vacant industrial buildings, which are underused. Due to the vacancy and the location, there is little economic pressure on real estate compared to urban areas. This provides cost-effective space for projects and innovative ideas. Besides the former industrial buildings, the valley is very agricultural. In Switzerland, 270,000 tonnes of animal feed are imported from soya every year. Agroscope is currently researching alternative sources of protein, such as algae. These can be produced on uncultivated land and have a higher protein con- tent per kg. Growth occurs through photosynthesis and CO2 in a closed system.
The project combines a floating algae production facility on the compensation basin built for energy generation with a public swimming pool as an additional function and added value for the local popula- tion. The algae will be processed in the nearby former Bebié wool spinning mill, which will be converted with minor interventions. Both the construction of the bath and the installations in the industrial building are made of unused hardwood.
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 FS 2024
The Anna Göldi Museum is located in Ennenda and is housed in the historic attic of the former Hänggiturm. It is barely recognizable from the outside and only the large letters ANNA on the chimney indicate that the museum is situated on the Trümpi site. The museum does not only tells a forgotten story of witches and women from another time, but also recalls the global influence and power of the textile industry in Switzerland.
In the first phase of the research, I looked at the content of the exhibition in the Anna Göldi Museum and took a closer look at the textile industry around Ennenda. As my grandmother was one of the workers in the Uznach spinning mill, I chose a very personal and intuitive research method. In the book Untold Stories I collected tellings of different women and recorded them as a collage in my book. The collected material is very diverse and highlights specific aspects that the women experienced and that concerned me. The aim was not to find a single truth, but to use the medium of the artist book to make them visible side by side without judging them.
On the ground floor of the museum, an additional program is to be provided that the residents of Ennenda can use and appropriate the space. As an exhibition, the women in my book have been given a space as a reminder of them and what they have experienced. Each of these spaces has a domestic character and does not correspond to the authoritarian character of a typical museum. Everyone should find their own access to the museum and new stories should be able to develop side by side in this new place.
In addition, a new park is to be created, which will become a visible center in Ennenda where people can meet or simply go for a walk. A water basin and a pavilion are located in the spacious area and give the outdoor area its character. The structures are simply designed, showcase the traditional craftsmanship of the area and provide another space for the clubs in Ennenda to appropriate and benefit from.
Diploma HS 2023
Diploma FS 2023
The aim of the KW Walzmühle project is to restore the existing buil- dings of the Alpenbrückli complex and introduce new infras- tructures in order to re-activate the site and its reach onto the surrounding area and its population. The implementation of a bold communal hall linking the former grain silo and the old mill is meant to generate an intermediate space that could be used by the new users of the complex as well as the daily passers-by from the region. The site is in close proximity to the centre of Glarus as well as the train tracks and stands on a pedestrian path that sees a daily flux of users crossing the old mill factory thus making it a place with a high potential for social & commercial gatherings as well as a distribution node for locally produced goods.
The new site would offer a new commercial hub for the city of Glarus, allowing local producers & suppliers to gather in a centralised environment where each could benefit from the experience and networks of each other. The goal is to introduce a variety of co- working spaces, showrooms as well as storage facilities that could enable national and international investors and distributors to come and meet in person with a broader range of small to me- dium-scale producers in order to facilitate the export of locally produced goods across the rest of the country as well as beyond our borders. The importance of the local economy and locally sourced productions is becoming a critical part of fair trade poli- cies as well as the development of suburban regions that develop products further away from economic centres such as Zurich.
Diverse state entities and private companies have already taken the challenge to boost the economy of smaller companies and expand the reach of new start-ups and producers outwards of the valley in order to bring the region to a more competitive state in opposition to the country‘s leading food distributors like Coop and Migros. These mega companies control the majority of Switzerland‘s food market and thus possess an essential influen- ce on the prices and distribution networks of goods across the country making it very difficult for smaller companies to maintain a sustainable business and push their products onto the Swiss market on their own.
Diploma HS 2022
The office building at Gartenhofstrasse 17 was built in 1966 by Sigmund Feigel (1921 - 2004). While the adjacent Zweierstrasse is lined by a row of office buildings constructed around the same time, Gartenhofstrasse 17 is slightly set back into the street, reaching into the realm of residential buildings and neo-classicist factory buildings.
Throughout its lifespan the building had been renovated several times. The roof and the party walls on both sides have been isolated, the canopy renewed, and in 2011 the old facade panels were exchanged. The new facade, designed by Rolf Schaffner, led to a drastic decrease in energy consumption. The different construction periods result in a „bricolage des temps“.
Currently three of the building’s six stories are empty due to the relocation of municipal police offices, making the future of Gartenhofstrasse 17 uncertain.
Only few interventions are necessary to fundamentally change the organization of the building.
On the inside a new form of living takes place where domestic spaces and the workplace fade into each other. From the outside the additions reinterpret the appearance of the building within its urban setting. While keeping the integrity of Schaffner´s facade intact, the side facades are opened with large pivoting windows that create a vis-à-vis to the adjacent neo-classicist buildings. In the courtyard one of the three parking garages has been opened, creating an alley way between the former office building and a new atelier building. On the front side an extension of the canopy allows a glimpse into the hidden world of the backyard.
The ways in which particular elements, spaces and structures are transformed remind us of the „rococoization“ of gothic churches. By introducing a new grammar, given things change the way we perceive them. Despite the obvious friction between building periodes and languages there derives a new unity.
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
Diploma HS 2021
Chair of Architecture and Construction
Adam Caruso
The project is presented as a folder, a collection of stories, architectural details, and material understanding, to provide information about the handling of the building and propose a resource for an ongoing transformation. The pages and stories can be rearranged, offering multiple readings and interpretations of the building, architectural fragments, and the interventions.
The research project engages with the hotel building known as Marriott that opened in the 1970s as an autonomous object in the city center of Zurich.The research unfolded stories about the building from contact with the original architect of the building, the interior designers, and the Head of Engineering who has worked in the building for over 25 years. Since the opening of the hotel, the idea of a «complete work of art» has been defiant. Over the years, the building underwent numerous modifications and transformations, revealing mutable versions of itself to keep up with the changing trends in hotel architecture.The generic new interiors have alienated the building’s interior from its shell. Each trend lasts for a generation and is custom- made for international hotel guests.The real users of the building, the workers, are thereby overlooked.The spatial separation between the front and back of the house is disproportionate.
The light touch aims to transform unused or historically interesting spaces in the hotel by critically reframing the existing layers and instrumentalising what is there.The actions are planned following the skill and expertise of the Engineering Team members of Marriott who have been in charge of every change ever made. Each space is appropriated to a new programme to tell the stories I encountered and reveal (im)material values that the building holds. Old, intermediate, and new layers create new atmospheres that are characterful to reconnect the hotel to its users and stay relevant in the future.
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.
Re-Use Ciba
The design proposes the conversion of the former parking garage of CIBA (Chemical Industry Basel). Today, the building is owned by Novartis and can only be used by its employees. The building is the only one of the available buildings situated on public land. Following the imminent departure of Novartis, the building is expected to be subject to the so-called „Heimfall“, whereby it will become property of the city.
The context is characterised by a high rate of foreigners, young people and low-income earners. The existing neighborhoods are organising themselves surprisingly well despite difficult conditions. There is a strong liveliness, which can be observed in numerous social and cultural institutions and their high frequency of visitors.
With the planned reorganisation of the former CIBA area, large-scale changes and gentrification processes are to be expected, which will lead to rising rents and eventually displacement.
In order to provide the local people with a public space of opportunity, a "Volkshaus" for Klybeck is to be initiated as an interface between the existing and new developments. In the spirit of the "Volkshäuser" of the emancipatory motivated labour movement around 1900, the project is organised on its own initiative in the form of a newly founded association.
In order to support the process of appropriation by the users, a temporal factor is included in the project: at no point should there be an end to the design process. Uses and interventions influence each other, the project is constantly in motion. This also corresponds to the structural logic of the existing building. The ramp system of the double helix emphasises a continuous space, which becomes a place of community. The regular structure of the building is overlayed with specific situations on a human scale. The monumental structure stands self-confidently along Horburgpark and uses its existing representational power.
Welche Heimat?
Society and the Image
Download Booklet

PDF 80 MB





































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































