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

Diesbach was once a village that was home to generations of people from all walks of life. Following the relocation and closure of the textile factories in the Linth valley, demographic decline ensued, leaving vacant buildings behind after the workers had left. 
Other factors also contributed to the decline in Diesbach's social life. The village shop, which used to be a place for villagers to share, had to close because it was no longer profitable. The village Gasthaus, which had a small bar-restaurant, also closed, leaving the villagers without a meeting place close to home. 
This lack of meeting places quickly became apparent during our site visits, and was confirmed by the villagers we met. 

But how can Diesbach be revitalised? 
Thanks to our regenerative farm project in Diesbach, a new economic activity is emerging in the village. This farm of more than 100 hectares involves more than forty farmers and supplies a wide variety of local produce. 

The former village shop building has been converted into a kitchen, restaurant and grocery shop.  Products from our regenerative farm, as well as products from the Legler areal start-ups, are sold on site in a self-service shop, the pantry of the inhabitants of Diesbach.  
These products are also prepared in the kitchen to create dishes available in three different ways. They are sold directly in the grocery shop for takeaway, they are also available by delivery for the village's elderly, and it is also possible to eat them on site in the Diesbach canteen, a place that brings together villagers, seasonal workers and new workers from the village. All generations from different working backgrounds come together in this place of sharing, which had disappeared and was so much appreciated by the villagers. 
On the ground floor is the village's kitchen and pantry, which benefits both. The cooks use the pantry to prepare meals and also restock the shelves with takeaway food.  
The first floor is accessible via a staircase that opens onto the public space to access the restaurant area. The staircase leads past a greenhouse, a reminder that the produce comes directly from the village and a foretaste of what's on the plates. 

This greenhouse was once a garage that has now been transformed into a place for growing plants. The wooden structure of the existing garage is duplicated on either side of the building, like an extrusion of its original volume. The opaque cladding of the existing building is retained, while the two extensions to the building have a transparent polycarbonate cladding, to heat the space using the sun's rays. 
A workshop and plants requiring little light are placed in the centre of the building, while those requiring more sunlight are located in the two extensions. 

The Gasthaus, which faces the grocery shop and restaurant building, is home to seasonal workers in both summer and winter. During the warmer months, some of the civil servants are housed in this former gasthaus, which has been converted into a large WG. During the cold season, some of the seasonal workers from the Braunwald ski resort, 20 minutes away by public transport, can be accommodated in this WG when the fields no longer require as many workers. 
The building mainly requires interior work, as its facades are iconic in this village and must not be altered.  
A variety of rooms have been designed to meet different needs. 
Rooms have been created on the first two floors, where the Gasthaus' communal areas used to be. On the second floor, bathrooms have been added to the existing rooms to add quality to what already existed. And under the magnificent wooden roof structure is the new common area of this large WG.

In this way, a place that had been neglected over the years has been reborn in a new light, with the arrival of a younger generation in the village, while at the same time responding to the wishes of the inhabitants who no longer felt considered following the unification of all the villages in the valley into one large municipality, Glarus Sud.

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 Since the start of the industrial revolution, the western social system has been built on constant growth. Growth in population, economic performance, technological capabilities, cultural output - no area of human life has been untouched by this dynamic.

But it can no longer be ignored that we are at a breaking point. The planetary boundaries have been reached or already exceeded in many areas. The climate crisis as well as the biodiversity crisis are both negative consequences of this system.

A change of course is therefore not only needed, but inevitable due to demographics. Demographic developments will radically transform the society we know. Even if it still seems to be a distant future in Switzerland at the moment, the population here will also start to shrink in a few decades, even in urban areas. This is already the case in many European countries, and there are also areas in Switzerland that have been shrinking for decades. The area around the Klausen Pass is just such an area.

This project examines two case studies on both sides of the Klausen Pass to find out what kind of architecture makes sense in a shrinking society. How can places be created that enable a sustainable form of growth and coexistence in such a location? On the Glarus side, a new scheme is proposed for the former woollen weaving mill in Rüti, while on the Uri side, an new approach is implemented in the former Gasthof St. Anton in Spiringen.

Such shrinking places have one advantage: the forces of the market are significantly weaker and projects that are not aimed at optimising profits also have a chance to thrive. There is an opportunity to utilise these places creatively through small interventions and make them usable for society.

The projects are characterised by the fact that they consist of a large number of small interventions that can be carried out without great expense over a longer period of time. If an intervention is a success, it can be built upon; if it is a failure, it can be reacted to. In this context, architecture is not understood as a project, but as a process.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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The Memories of the House Museum is devoted to the domestic spaces of textile industry related housing in Ennenda, Kanton Glarus. This museum spreads all over the village, like a fabric of spaces, each giving a specific impression of a domestic space.

The main exhibition is located in the former industrial site of the Jenny factory in Ennenda. It is situated on the ground floor of a Hängeturm, a reconstruction of a historical local building typology, specifically created to dry freshly printed fabrics. The exhibition consists of 1:1 reconstructions of 19th century domestic spaces from Ennenda. Copying, relocating and rearranging the rooms allows to compare the conditions of dwelling between different social classes that were all involved in the textile industry. It is an attempt to revise the way the local history has been written and to counterbalance the inequality of documentation and preservation of local buildings and stories. The reconstructions are built in timber, each with one section as a plaster cast of the original space. The exhibition of physical spaces is accompanied by pieces of local oral history in the form of specific stories told over speakers.

The Museum spreads into the village and the interventions at Kirchweg are the most direct extension of the museum programme. The row of houses at Kirchweg is under heritage protection and despite having survived for almost two hundred years, some of the houses have started to decay after losing the uses of the ground floor spaces. Previously some of those spaces were used for commercial functions. The houses had stayed relevant because they had the necessary room for adaptation: physically in the form of extensions on the northern side, legally in the form the law. Today this adaptation is partly hindered by heritage protection. With my interventions I aim to find a method to adapt three of those ground floor spaces and to restore their former use, whilst providing a programme that is needed by the museum whilst also becoming a cultural and public space for residents of Ennenda.

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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.

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Referring to Lucius Burckhardts ‘Der kleinstmögliche Eingriff’ written in the 1980s, the project aims to de-objectify the Marriott Hotel that is located at the most central locations, yet remains mostly unnoticed by the cities’ inhabitants. In the sense of Burckhardts aesthetic survey, the project follows six paths that lead up to the many entrances of the building and proposed the smallest possible interventions to initiate transformation. By promoting a change in perception of the building and its relationship to the urban landscape the buildings strength of accessibility can once again be valued. It could then become a space for the public that ultimately prevents it from demolition.

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Cohabitation

City as one living organism provides habitat for human and non-human being, they influence their abiotic environment and the environment in turn as well influence the biota.

Due to the urbanisation and monoculture soil usage, city becomes a refuge for wild animal. City should co-evolve with its environment, empower the nonhuman actors and define new typology for cohabitation.

Triemlifussweg is characterized as a „Siedlung Biotop“ connected Uetliberg and Cemetery Sihlfeld.

The these is an interdisciplinary research of sysnanthrope species and aim to develop a strategy of cross-species cohabitation.

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