Re form
Re form - Final Review
May 31 / June 1, 2022
Tuesday, May 31st and Wednesday, June 1st, Final Reviews
09:30, ETH Zürich, ONA E30
Guests: Céline Bessire, Maria Conen, Fredi Fischli, Françoise Fromonot, Tine Milz, Niels Olsen
Re form - Studio Review 2
May 3, 2022
Tuesday, May 3rd, Studio Review, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 10:00
Guest Critic: Stéphanie Dadour
Re form - Studio Review 1
March 16, 2022
Wednesday, March 16th, Studio Review, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 10:00 - 16:00
Guest Critic: Jan De Vylder
Re form
Introduction: 22 February 2022, 10am

Portal, Thomas Demand, 2018
Most of Zurich’s 49 protestant churches are underused, some of the largest like those at Enge and Wollishofen are only used during Easter and Christmas. Many of these churches are spatially generous and full of special qualities in their architecture and in their furnishing. They also encompass substantial precincts, some grittily urban and others park-like in character. The situation of almost empty churches is not unique to Zurich and is common throughout western European towns and cities.
The rise of the consumer economy has resulted in a dramatic decline of free, publicly accessible interiors in Zurich. A place to eat a picnic lunch or simply to sit down and rest, affordable spaces for yoga class and book clubs, informal workplaces. The city’s churches provide shelter and care for society’s most vulnerable whatever their religion or nationality, and the reform church works closely with the city and other social providers in Zurich. However, a wider and more socially diverse use of this valuable stock of publicly scaled interiors in the city could radically transform the sense of ‘the public’ in Zurich.
The semester will begin with the historically and architecturally rich fabric of these churches, closely surveying the physical at the same time as speculating how the tangible and the spiritual co-exist and support each other within the bodies of these structures. We will use drawing, modelmaking and time-based media to reframe the existing conditions of these churches as well as suggest where their potential for more intense use might lie. We will engage with the church’s current social programmes and make connections with other groups who are involved in activating the under-used spaces of the city. Using programme alongside spatial and material means, we will develop architectures that more fully realise the potential of this extensive social and spatial public resource that lies within the city.
The projects that emerge during the course of the semester will be part of the Nexpo 2028 initiative, whose directors Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen will participate in the teaching and programming of the studio.
Construction as an integrated discipline is included in this course
FS 2022, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Claudio Schneider, Barbara Thüler
Florence 4 days, 8 things
Seminar Week: March 21–25, 2022

Paul visiting Peter in prison, Masolino / Masaccio, circa 1485, S. Maria del Carmine, Cappella Brancacci, Florence
The art of fifteenth century Florence is so well known that it should collapse into a cliché. Yet, when one encounters the paintings of Fra Angelico and Masaccio, the architecture of Alberti and Brunelleschi, the sculpture of Donatello, one can still be profoundly moved. This art can speak to complex emotional frailties in a way that gives meaning to the idea of humanism. It is a wonder that artists from such a long time ago had insights into human psychology, social mores and the economy and politics that still powerfully resonate today.
During our visit to Florence we will visit a single work each morning, and another in the afternoon. We will spend time in these spaces so that we can register what they mean to us today. We will discuss the conditions of their production more than five hundred years ago, how the relationships between patrons, clients and artists in those time are enmeshed in the work and how these things still have relevance today.
The costs are 501–750 CHF including transportation, accommodation, one dinner, entrances and reader.
Category C, 16 students
FS 2022, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Claudio Schneider, Barbara Thüler
Diploma HS 2022
Copies
Before the 20th century, imitation was simply how one learned, the creative act was only considered legitimate if it had discernible relations to a model. Painters would study the human body and how it had been represented in the past, architects studied the classical orders and the ways in which they had been applied and adapted to past architectures. If not classically inclined one could study surface ornament from the Islamic and Gothic worlds, like Owen Jones in the Grammar of Ornament. Even in times of extravagant originality, the accumulation and collection of images and motifs is how cultural production has always moved forward. Each new copy is itself an interpretation and therefore an original. Today, the impossibility of novelty and the futility of its pursuit is clear to see and invites us to perhaps engage anew with forms of imitation. At the same time we need urgently to engage with the environmental turn, which does not mean the end of architecture. By recalling the infinitely rich narrative of architecture we can once again discover the space of artistic freedom.
The Chairs of Caruso and Delbeke will together re-engage with these complex and rewarding worlds. The research phase of the diploma will compile a new Grammar of Ornament where students will have the opportunity to collect, research and represent new constellations of form spanning from the ancient world to the present. The second phase will apply these lessons to the design of major additions to a series of Zurich buildings, adding a grammar of energy and construction to that of history and ornament. Our goal is to discover the beauty that is held within the age of upcycling.
Diploma, HS 2022, ETH Zürich
Chair Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Adam Caruso, Claudio Schneider
Chair Delbeke
Matthew Critchley, Maarten Delbeke
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 Projects HS 2021
Submission of the Diploma Projects
January 13, 2022
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.
Live: What is Next?
Seminar week 19–23 October 2020
A few semesters ago the studio tentatively made moves towards modernism. The evident failure of architecture to address the imbalance 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 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?
From our new home in Zürich Oerlikon 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. 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 reader.
For the week we are collaborating with the Architecture Foundation, who is presenting and streaming the discussions throughout the week and who makes them accessible to rewatch on their YouTube channel.
HS 2020, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
What is it worth?
Society and the Image
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