Making Plans for Living Together
Making Plans for Living Together - Remote Teaching

Fiona Kuang, Linda Sjøqvist
Teaching remote during this semester, we are using Are.na to show and share work online.
Find the studio account and the students Are.na accounts, showing their current work on their projects, under the following links:
Murielle Morger, Eva Schneuwly
Lisa Stricker, Jenna Nutivaara
Lucia Giacobbi, Cristina Urzola
Nicolas Schwegler, Severin Ziegler
Making Plans for Living Together - Workshop 2
March 17, 2021
Wednesday, March 17th, Workshop 2, Group Works on Site and Architecture
Guest Critic: Jochen Schamelhout (Elmēs, Chair of Jan de Vylder, ETHZ)
Making Plans for Living Together - Workshop 1
March 2, 2021
Tuesday, March 2nd, Workshop 1, Group Works on Reference and Text
Making Plans for Living Together
Introduction: 23 February 2021, 11:00am
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
Entangled Histories
Online Talk: Entangled Histories. Berta Rahm Pavilion for the Saffa 58
April 13, 2021 18:00

Opening of the second chapter Entangled Histories on Tuesday, 13 April 2021 at 6pm via Zoom
Introducing photographic works by Clara Richard and Nicolò Krättli and the Growing Library
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.
Diploma Projects HS20
Submission of the Diploma Projects
December 08, 2020
Making Plans for Living
Making Plans for Living - Final Crits
December 16, 2020 10:00 - 18.30
Wednesday, December 16th, Second Day of Final Crits via Zoom
Guest Critics: Liza Fior (partner muf architecture/art, London), Axel Simon (editor Hochparterre, Zurich)
Making Plans for Living - Final Crits
December 15, 2020 10.00 - 18.30
Tuesday, December 15th, First Day of Final Crits via Zoom
Guest Critics: Liza Fior (partner muf architecture/art, London), Summer Islam (partner Material Cultures, Studio Abroad, London), Dr. Marina Olsen (Karma International, Zurich)
Making Plans for Living - Final Crits
December 15/16, 2020

Atlas of Liberating Acts, Olga Cobuscean, Thomas Rohrer, 2020
Tuesday, December 15th and Wednesday, December 16th, Final Crits via Zoom
Guest Critics: Liza Fior (partner muf architecture/art, London), Summer Islam (partner Material Cultures, Studio Abroad, London), Dr. Marina Olsen (Karma International, Zurich), Axel Simon (editor Hochparterre, Zurich)
Making Plans for Living - Studio Review
November 24, 2020

Storage, Leslie Majer, Félicie Morard, 2020
Tuesday, October 27th, Studio Review, via Zoom
Guest Critics: Simona Ferrari (Chair of Architectural Behaviorology, ETHZ),
Dr. Ir. Hans Teerds (OASE Journal for Architecture, Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design, ETHZ)
Making Plans for Living - Remote Teaching

City Hotel, David Eckert, Florian von Planta, 2020
The studio went over to remote teaching for the remaining weeks of the fall semester 2020.
Find the students blogs, showing their current work on their projects, under the following links:
Pablo Stadelmann, Cyrill Wechsler
Marina Medic, Maria Unterlechner
Christian Cotting, Patrick Holzer
Caroline Dietlmeier, Sara Katharina Keller
Ansgar Stadler, Philip Stöckler
Charlotte Reuse, Manon Zimmerli
Paul Grieguszies Schäfer, Jaehee Shin
Making Plans for Living - Studio Review
October 27, 2020

Intimate Discussions, Charlotte Reuse, Manon Zimmerli, 2020
Tuesday, October 27th, Studio Review, ETH Zürich, ONA E7 or via Zoom
Guest Critic: Amy Perkins (Studio Tom Emerson, ETHZ)
What is Next?
Seminarweek: October 19–23, 2020

This is tomorrow, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1956
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
Making Plans for Living - Studio Review
September 29, 2020

Craneway Event, Tacita Dean, 2008, Marian Goodman Gallery
Tuesday, September 29th, Studio Review, ETH Zürich, ONA E30 or via Zoom
Making Plans for Living
Introduction: 15 September 2020, 10:30am, Kino Xenix

Cueva de las Manos, Río Pinturas, 9000 BCE
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
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
Domus Magazine
Contribution for Domus Magazine, October Issue 2020
Quanto vale la pena? / What is it worth?
What is it worth?
Re-Use Ciba
Commonalities on the Zürichberg
Nature is a significant element in the design site, a nature that has, however, different degrees of naturalness. The dominant presence in the site is the forest, a forest that has mainly the function of production and that is mostly private, but despite those facts it contains many public activities that coexist with each other, and this is because the forest is a common of the city of Zurich and is perceived in the formal aspect as open and public. These are the characteristics that I have tried to assimilate in the project trying to unblock the common in the design site and to recreate those atmospheres that we find in nature trying to break down those barriers that can sometimes be physical but that are also formal and mental.
This Mess is a Place
Society and the Image
Download Booklet

PDF 59 MB
New Publication
Hopkins in the City

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