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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Re form
A hybrid building for the Jewish community and the reformed church
High on top of the Bürgliterasse — a hill in the district of Enge in Zürich —stands the monumental reformed church Kirche Enge. It was built by Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli between 1892 and 1894. The distinct Neo-Renaissance style was directly inspired from Gottfried Semper himself, of whom Bluntschli was an important disciple. While the church was frequented by many inhabitants from the parish during the early twentieth century (the church provides seating for approx. 1200 people), the monumental church is currently severely underused. According to the sexton, a maximum of 100 people show up for the bi-monthly congregation.
Meanwhile, the Jewish community of Zürich, which is concentrated in Kreis 2 and 3, require a large amounts of space for worship and gathering. In this project, the specific constituency is Zürich's liberal Jewish community Or Chadasch ("New Light"). Through an interview with the president of Or Chadsch, the proposed project was briefed by some crucial requirements and contradictions. For the church in Enge to be converted into a synagogue, following aspects need to be considered:
The congregation must face Jerusalem, which lies on the diagonal axis of the crossing pointing towards South-East.Any depictions of Christian figures and symbols must be concealed. In general, ornamentation is undesired in a modern synagogue.The space should provide a much higher level of illuminance, as the synagogue will be used for multi-functional purposes (such as political talks, readings and festivities).These requirements should be solved with the stance of minimalist structural interventions, as the church stands under landmark status and does not allow significant constructive alter- ations. The mandatory S-E direction is addressed by creating a symmetrical space along the diagonal axes and making the church benches mobile. Any ornamentation will be covered by large-scale curtains (which can be contracted to ensure a hybrid use for both religions). The inner dome will be partially removed, which exposes the well-lit tholobate and allows for additional light to enter the church.
The shapes and concepts of the project have been informed by Semper's Stoffwechseltheorie, the emulation of existing elements of the church and formal concepts from the Kabbalah (a variety of Jewish mysticism).
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
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
Dancing together apart re-evaluates the accessibility to food in cities, including the socio-cultural aspect around food rituals and spaces in communities. A proposition in three acts articulates different scales on the site of Engrosmarkt, from events to architectural interventions, as an ongoing research challenging the publicness of the industrial site.
The interventions gradually disrupt, alter, and modify some existing part of the site while using and misusing what is already built. The six physical infiltrations simultaneously happen with the emergence of a community life next to the sellers and truck drivers. Programs implicating each point of the city food chain arise alongside the market. Engrosmarkt becomes a laboratory working together but still apart with the existing flows.
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?
Society and the Image
Download Booklet

PDF 59 MB