ETH Zürich   Studio Adam CarusoETH Zürich  Studio Adam CarusoETH Zürich  Studio A. CarusoETHZ   Studio Caruso

Refining an idea until it is precise, developing a project so that it can be materialised, managing a design through the complexity of realisation. Architecture takes a long time and there is a strong temptation to reach for the eternal. Most of the constructed environment around us emerges out of even more complex circumstances and yet often comes together more quickly and flexibly. Are there things that architects can learn from how a farmer plans their fields to be productive and sustainable, how a tailor can mend a garment so that it acquires qualities that didn’t exist in the original,  how resourceful builders can make do when materials and time are in short supply. Improvising and adapting have a long history in the built environment and now that the time for new building is coming to an end, perhaps architects need to more fully embrace the sensibility of the interim. 

There is a long tradition of interim inhabitation, it is what squatters do, and it is acknowledged by artists when they move, like pioneers, into an unpopular quarter of the city. More recently the idea of interim inhabitation has become part of the development process, protecting empty buildings from squatters and vandalism, beginning to build the brand of what comes next. We are interested in all of these examples and wish to explore ways in which the positive qualities of the interim can be extended so that the seeming inevitability of gentrification is deferred, perhaps forever. 

We will work in a series of buildings in Zurich that are currently being provisionally occupied under different legal arrangements. We will begin by closely observing and recording current conditions, learning something about the relationships between creative programme and inventive spatial practice. By deploying a series of processes; to repair, to collect, to mark, to remove, to arrange, to support, we will work to develop the current contingent situation into something more robust. In this process  we will engage with the existing networks of inhabitants, building owners and spatial/material arrangement, and challenge the social, legal and aesthetic limitations of architecture. 

Construction as an integrated discipline is included in this course 

HS 2021, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso

Emilie Appercé, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Claudio Schneider, Barbara Thüler

Introduction: 23 February 2021, 11.00am, via Zoom

During this semester we will be working with Are.na, you can find more information, documents and current work of the semester on our Are.na page.

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species was based on its author’s observations of the natural world. Its emphasis on competition and on the evolutionary success of nature’s predators was also informed by Darwin’s experience of the competitive ravages of industrial England. The idea of a ‘social Darwinism’ was used as justification by the 19th century industrial elite for the social damage that was inherent to the industrial economy. In the age of science, what was true for nature, they argued, was equally true for the political and the social. Critiques of the apparent determinism of Darwin’s theory emerged as soon as his book was published, and a particularly eloquent and comprehensive response, Mutual Aid – A Factor of Evolution was published by Peter Kropotkin at the end of the 19th century. Based on observations, and more pragmatic than ideological, the book describes how widespread and important, mutually beneficial cooperation and reciprocity are in both the animal kingdom and within the history of human societies. 

This semester we will make detailed plans for living together. We will imagine ourselves freed from the false dogma of social Darwinism, in a place where essential tasks like caring for people, growing food and living in balance with our environment, are more important than non-essential activities like banking and academia. We will study models of mutual aid in the human, animal and vegetal worlds through references that are modest in size but that engage with matters of material, technique and society altogether, acknowledging that these are different facets of large and necessarily interconnected systems. Some of our references, like the Shaker community of Mount Lebanon are historic, some like the Chelsea Hotel are urban, others like Melliodora in Australia are ongoing experiments. Withdrawing from the centre, these settlements seek out the space and the time to make societies that could be more equitable, providing alternatives to the mainstreams of their time. With a range of principles and techniques, from forms of governance to methods of upcycling and spatial experimentation, we will work on a series of sites in and around Zurich, considering programme and material, human and animal inhabitation, allowing a complexity of subjects of equivalent importance to inform the development of the designs. 

Construction as an integrated discipline is included in this course 

FS 2021, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso

Emilie Appercé, Martina Bischof, Adam Caruso, Benjamin Groothuijse, Claudio Schneider, Barbara Thüler

This semester the studio will have an integrated Seminar Week. From our new home in ONA 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. Members of the studio will be responsible for the detailed programme of the week and will lead in the discussions with our invited guests. 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 Seminarwoche reader, which will be prepared for publication during the course of the week. 

The costs are approximately 50-250 CHF

Category A

HS 2020, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso

Emilie Appercé, Martina Bischof, Adam Caruso, Benjamin Groothuijse, Claudio Schneider, Barbara Thüler

A few semesters ago the studio tentatively approached modernism. The evident failure of architecture to address the imbalances 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 research has been fruitful, if a bit speculative, so now is the time to get more specific and to explore how themes of emancipation and responsibility can form the basis for new architectures. 

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? We will start the semester by looking at a diverse range of life-practices; from the cave paintings made by our distant ancestors, to St Francis’s labours as depicted by Giotto in Assisi, from the multiple disciplines encompassed by classical Indian dance to the slow and deliberate narratives in the films of Tacita Dean. While we attempt to discern new practices that address the challenges of today, we will start to draw plans, plans that form a notation for these rituals, plans that describe existing spaces, plans for new ways of living.

The studio will have an integrated Seminar Week. From our new home in ONA we will meet and debate with (both in person and with Zoom) a wide range of figures who are challenging the status quo of technique, economics and politics. In the course of the week these new ideas will be added to the ongoing research of the studio and will form the basis for an interactive, screen based journal, and for the production of a reader, a modest call to arms. 

Introduction: 15 September 2020, 10:30am, Kino Xenix

The integrated discipline Construction is included in this course.

HS 2020, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso

Emilie Appercé, Martina Bischof, Adam Caruso, Benjamin Groothuijse, Claudio Schneider, Barbara Thüler