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
Diploma FS 2025
Un-City
Diesbach, autumn 2024
For a long time, the city has been a magnet for money, for jobs, for culture and for learning. This concentration of everything leads to an inexhaustible demand for resources. There will never be enough land to exploit for profit or adequate housing for the population, a condition of scarcity that is fundamental to late capitalism. This semester we will work in places away from the city where the space exists for more balanced ideas of society to bloom. With the coming of the snow, we descend from the Klausen pass, from 2000 to 600 metres. Linthal, Rüti and Diesbach are villages at the head of the valley, each has clusters of houses and outbuildings, substantial mill complexes with their own hydro power station on the river Linth and abundant agricultural lands. Many of these structures are underused, but in their rich spatial diversity they are a fertile ground waiting for new social programmes. The history of the Glarus Valley is one of invention, industry and agriculture. The human and material resources of the valley obviously still exist, and if the already existing cooperatives and associations could become more interconnected, new energies would emerge from these new networks. This semester we will engage with the contemporary life of Glarus. Observing and recording the social and physical fabric of the villages we will meet as many people as we can, to benefit from their knowledge and to share some of their ambitions. Following themes that will include hydro power, food, industry, health and learning, we will deploy strategies of adaptation and improvisation, in the short and the long term, to develop new kinds of incomplete utopias. Existing and new construction, landscapes and buildings, will transform and consolidate the qualities and constellations that we have found and begin to reveal what the future life of the un-city could be.
Diploma, FS 2025, ETH Zürich
Chair Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Adam Caruso
Chair of Being Alive
Stefan Breit, Teresa Galí-Izard
Baumeister: Selected by Caruso St John
B11 Baumeister: Selected by Caruso St John
Curated Issue November 2024
For the November 2024 issue of the magazine Caruso St John have selected a Baumeister Reader, a series of texts that touch on different aspects of the challenges that lie ahead for the practice of architecture.
Remoteness and Identity
Remoteness and Identity
Introduction 17 September 2024, 10 am
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
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)
Alan von Arx / Clara He / Weichen Wang
FS 2023 Re (Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat)
Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat
Re form
What makes a church pretentious? A tall bell tower? An austere, imposing façade? A stubbornly symmetrical interior? A use of elements that try to make it look like a gothic cathedral? A display of large, expensive objects? Maybe it’s above all a feeling of inadequacy. A suburban place of worship in a quiet, modest residential area, if disguised as a cathedral, will undoubtedly appear pretentious. Maybe then it’s a question of the interplay between scale and context.
From afar, what was once a defining element in the silhouette of the city has now become submerged by more imposing figures. It seems that if it were part of the city, and not only part of its local neighbourhood, then it wouldn’t appear so disproportionate. Maybe it should simply stop pretending and actually start being what it wants to be. If it can house 1,400 people, if it can be seen from afar, if it can resonate far away, if it is too much to handle for its local setting, maybe it should stop hiding amidst its quiet sourroundings. Maybe it should start claiming its place in our city.
Maybe what our cities need, and what this building could offer, is a large, open, accessible, free, public space. This is the essence of a church, one could say. Maybe we should try and celebrate emptyness rather than trying to fill it. Consider it as a breathing space, a void for beauty, for society. Maybe this is a way to turn a pretentious, disproportionate, underused church into a place all could use, appreciate and benefit from. By sharing this monument, by celebrating this void, the building’s bad intentions would be corrected, and its good intentions fulfilled.
When the Pauluskirche was built in 1934, it acted as a social centre for the newly-built housing developments, inhabited by people which had come from the countryside or neighbouring countries to work in the booming industry at the time. Nowadays, it could function as a social centre for the ever-growing student population which lacks functional and pleasant spaces to work outside of home or university. Installing a public reading room would better fulfill the possibilities of this building. It could be a calm, almost meditative space, which could still cater for large events if needed. It would be more accessible, turning it into a meeting point between multiple thoroughfares. This could merge the local inhabitants with the students of the Irchel University campus next door, as well as with the general public.
The nave could act as a large, multi-purpose and accessible public interior, used as a reading room most of the time but easily transformable into a auditorium or a concert hall. A curtain, which could be drawn every other Sunday when services happen, could provide a more intimate atmosphere for the fifty churchgoers who regularly attend. On the other side, the parish centre would balance this void by being transformed into a very dense building, equipped with a library, a café, and many small study rooms which could be booked for conferences and so on. Linking these two, the large square would be transformed by adding a loggia to the parish centre, functionning both as an entrance to the study centre, a covered exterior space for the café and a stage for outdoor concerts.
Maybe we should try and celebrate emptyness rather than trying to fill it. Consider it as a breathing space, a void for beauty, for society. Maybe this is a way to turn a pretentious, disproportionate, underused church into a place all could use, appreciate and benefit from. By sharing this monument, by celebrating this void, the building’s bad intentions would be corrected, and its good intentions fulfilled.
James Flaus / Luca Bronca
FS 2022 Re form
Kirche auf der Egg
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
Raumbörse Sihlquai
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
This project focuses on different care-related issues in the Triemlifussweg neighbourhood: environmental, pedagogical, material and architectural. It proposes various interventions, on a small or large scale, which are derived from observations or interviews with users and inhabitants. The interventions are often economical or light in terms of material and expenditure. They can be seen as easily implemented strategies, and therefore also easily adjustable to the needs of the users. These strategies need to be tested, modified, adapted to improve at best the daily life of the inhabitants, so that they can take care of themselves and their loved ones, their homes and their cities, their planet and its ecosystems.
Sarah Köstler / Patrick Greber
FS 2021 Making Plans for Living Together, Zürich
Monte Verità
Making Plans for Living
David Eckert / Florian von Planta
HS 2020 Making Plans for Living, Zürich
Ragamala, Indian Miniatures
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.
What is it worth?
Download Books
PDF 331 MB
PDF 73 MB
Download Book
PDF 45 MB
Welche Heimat?
Tobias Wagner
HS 2019 Welche Heimat?
Society and the Image
Carmen Kanits / Giulia Marioni
HS 2019 Society and the Image, Zürich
Download Booklet
PDF 97 MB
Public Building
Antonio Corte Real e Brito Correia / Erich Schäli / Alan Pülz
FS 2019 Public Building, Zürich
Recueil et parallèle, Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand
Paris, 1799
Hidden Interiors
Noël Picco / Rina Rolli
HS 2018 Hidden Interiors, Zürich
Casa de Vidro, Lina Bo Bardi
São Paulo, 1951
The Ideal City
Silouane Fellrath / Gaetan Iannone
FS 2018 The Ideal City, Dietikon
Highrise City, Ludwig Hilbeseimer
1924
Describing Beauty
Kouros Azar
HS 2017 Describing Beauty, Zürich
Sea-Lion Mask
Alaska, 1900
Structure and Society
Mikael Blomfelt / Sandro Straube
FS 2017 Structure and Society, Zürich
Atlanpole, Hans Kollhoff
Nantes, 1988
Social Structure
Rebecca Konnertz
HS 2016 Social Structure, Graubünden
Agriculture & Industry
Graubünden
