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
The project proposes to convert and extend two underused buildings in the village into senior housing as an alternative to traditional retirement homes. The design emphasizes generous outdoor spaces and a strong connection to agriculture. The goal is to keep elderly residents physically and mentally active by involving them in farming activities. The two buildings are linked by a covered walkway that runs through an agroforestry area. Along this path are both productive and leisure facilities designed for seniors. This approach embraces ageing not as a decline, but as a meaningful phase of life, rooted in the community, the care and the rhythms of the land.
Diploma HS 2024
The Klausenpass, where the project is located, is very strongly impacted by the different seasons. Indeed, the road closure due to the winter snow covering of the 1948m asl pass makes the place very different depending on the seasons.
The project then seeks to create two different uses, interweaving the different conditions of the surroundings and answering challenges both in winter and summer. In summer, the main focus is to provide a platform dwelling people high up around the pass, providing cheap manpower for the local farmers working in the nearby alps.
In winter, the project otherwise very close to the road become completely isolated. The people that stayed and worked there during summer can stay in the same building, but in a very different environment. As a counterpart -and retribution- to the work accomplished during summer, guided skitouring outings are organized. This way of being compensated for the summer work allows a more economically accessible way to learn mountain sports.
In a more practical way, the building is dimensioned according the the workforce need of the farmers during the summer season. In winter, the building shifts in hibernation mode: since there is less need of rooms, the groups staying there are smaller. The bottom floor is then covered in snow, and is only used again the next spring.
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
Diploma HS 2022
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
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.
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
Re-working the mosaic questions the arbitrariness imposed by the cadastre and sug-gests to the inhabitants of the neighborhood a new appreciation of their surrounding landscape. A series of architectural and landscape interventions revisit the fragmen-tation caused by the urban mosaic as it is today and thus draw a constellation along the Triemlifussweg highly beneficial for biodiversity. Their complementarity offers residents a sustainable infrastructure that allows them to feel native to their place and thus reinforces the feeling of belonging to a community.
Re-Use Ciba
What is it worth?
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Welche Heimat?
Society and the Image
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