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

Programmatic, performative and urbanistic inadequacies are the most common excuses for demolishing buildings. Interiors are too dark, too noisy, too cold, too hot. Façades are insufficiently insulated. Apartment plans are too old fashioned, they will never rent or sell. The quarter is simply not dense enough. All of these arguments usually conceal another deficiency, the building is not valuable enough. In fact, it is just not valued enough. Zurich’s indefensible policy of Ersatz Neubau has unleashed a fury of demolition which is socially and environmentally unacceptable. With this diploma project we wish to explore alternatives to this waste, through strategies of lightweight responsiveness.

Our site for the semester will be the Marriott hotel, magnificent, if a little foreboding, on its site on Neumühlequai. We will imagine an ongoing programme of modifications that will better integrate this landmark into the social life of the city. We will act quickly before the model of international chain hotel becomes obsolete. The aim is to transform the under-exposed ballrooms, conference spaces and restaurants into a new kind of department store, still a location for consumption but now also a place that can accommodate the city’s developing culture of sustainable manufacturing. Over time we will allow this commercial innovation to rise up the building, to effect how the hotel’s rooms are used, and by whom. Eventually, the rooms at the Marriot will welcome more permanent residents and more varied households. All of these transformations will be undertaken with the minimum of means, taking seriously the complex relationships between a building’s embodied energy, its energy consumption and its social value. 

The Marriot is an important figure within the city, but is not yet a listed monument. We will use the first phase of the project to measure, record and assess its construction, details, material use, as well as its different values. We also will discuss different approaches of preservation with regards to their potential for the future of the Marriott. The second stage of the project will explore the programmatic, material and spatial transformation of the Marriott, building on the discoveries of the previous analysis. The means used will be fast, light and mutable, and we expect to discover a radical new architecture that is sustainable and emancipatory. 

The diploma is taught jointly by the Chairs of Silke Langenberg and Adam Caruso

HS 2021, ETH Zürich 

Chair for Architecture and Construction

Prof. Adam Caruso 

Chair for Construction Heritage and Preservation 

Prof. Dr. Silke Langenberg

Opening of the second chapter Entangled Histories on Tuesday, 13 April 2021 at 6pm
Introducing photographic works by Clara Richard and Nicolò Krättli and the Growing Library

The recording of the talk is accessible to watch on the ETH video portal.

With introductions by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen; the curatorial team Milena Buchwalder, Sonja Flury, Dorothee Hahn and Larissa Müller
Presentations by Emilie Appercé and Helen Thomas (Women Writing Architecture)
And a round table with Emilie Appercé, Nicolò Krättli, Clara Richard, Helen Thomas and Barbara Thüler 

When the Saffa 58 closed its doors and the small silvery pavilion seemed to have reached its end, Berta Rahm managed to sell the demountable structure to mushroom farmer Erica Hauser. At her farm in Gossau ZH, Hauser re-built the pavilion as a freestanding structure next to her production facilities to use it as a canteen for her workers. Later it was connected to the production building and converted into a show kitchen for clients and guests. For over 60 years the pavilion’s existence was entangled with the mushroom factory and the functionality of demonstrating its production process.

Mushrooms are curious things. They are not animals or plants, deserving their own taxonomic category. They enjoy the title of largest living specimen ever found, and they are made up of tiny threads called mycelium. These travel underground, connecting the roots of different plants, even different species, in an area together, allowing them to exchange nutrients and information that might be missing in their immediate surroundings. When it comes to feminist engagement, mushrooms can serve as both a metaphor and a model to describe and create networks, proposing a way of living and working together. Being connected with others means to learn from each other, to exchange ideas, to give and receive encouragement and to help each other grow across boundaries. Can a library be a facilitator and testing ground to rewrite history as non-hierarchical, associative and intertwined strands of knowledge? Is the model of mycelium-like connectivity specific to female networks? And what conditions do subterranean networks need to burst out above the surface?

This project is realised by the exhibition team Milena Buchwalder, Sonja Flury, Dorothee Hahn and Larissa Müllner on behalf of the ProSaffa1958-Pavillon Association, together with the directors of gta exhibitions Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen.

Adam Caruso, Helen Thomas (Editors)
Texts by Adam Caruso, Helen Thomas, Michael Hopkins, Reem Almannai, Victoria Easton, Bernd Schmutz, Florian Summa, Paul Vermeulen 
Photography by Hélène Binet
Design by Moiré

A transformation occurred in the work of Michael Hopkins and Partners during the 1980s and 1990s that was achieved at its highest level in the five urban buildings explored in this book. Relatively unknown outside Great Britain, Hopkins presents his perspective at that time in his lecture ‘Technology Comes to Town’, here published and balanced by building studies from five contemporary European architects. Essays by Adam Caruso and Helen Thomas frame the British scene in which the fundamental issues of technology, style and context that run through discussions of 20th century architecture are revisited. The presence of these themes in Hopkins’s architecture is revealed through survey drawings and new photographs of the buildings by Hélène Binet.

English

2019. 24 x 32 cm, linen
216 pages, 83 illustrations
ISBN 978-3-85676-392-3
75.00 CHF / 72.00 EUR