Finally, this Overview
Finally, this Overview
Introduction 15 September 2026, 10 am
Studio Caruso Archive, Various Authors, 2011-2026
In this last year of the Chair, we will look back with fresh eyes at fifteen years of research and design work. We will reflect on our archive, the collective endeavour of around a thousand students, and see what happens when the Palais Royal meets Sophie Calle, and when the Bank of England meets Theaster Gates. With invited collaborators and using new tools, this year we will take full advantage of finally having this overview.
This semester we will work on a large site in Zurich that while part of the city’s public infrastructure has always been a territory with limited public access. A place where the slaughter of animals and the distribution of meat will soon end, and public conversations within the local neighbourhood have already begun about imagining the future of this place. The city is assessing the heritage values of the site, and its economic and programmatic potential. For us, the future of the Schlachthof is an opportunity to heal the difficult karma of the site and to imagine what the civic could mean in a future when different actors, and not just humans, are given agency, where diverse ideas of programme and not just those of production, are allowed to flourish. We are interested in arranging the site in looser and more iterative ways so that new uses and constituencies can be accommodated as they emerge as part of an ongoing process. The mosque, the hospice, the caravanserai were places of care and exchange where society would both arrange and represent itself, where space became civic. Can we imagine the grand hall, the access yards, and the warehouses of the Schlachthof becoming locations for pleasure, care, propinquity and for the enactment of new kinds of civic life in Zurich.
Construction and writing as integrated disciplines are included in this course.
11 September 2026, 11:00 am, Pierre Huyghe Exhibition, Fondation Beyeler
15 September 2026, 10:00 am, Studio Introduction, ONA E30
HS 2026, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Anna Clocchiatti, Florian Kilian Jaritz
The City in the City
Seminar Week: October 19–23, 2026
İstanbul, Matrakçı Nasuh, 1537
Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul… all cities whose complex histories can still palpably be felt as part of the present. An ever-expanding settlement, this was the capital for three empires, both trade route and centre. For much of its history this has also been a place of diversity and tolerance, a place with many languages that welcomed foreigners to become part of its heady demographic mix.
We will travel to these cities on the Bosphorus to visit both the sites of empire and the fleeting places of everyday life. With the guidance of local colleagues, we will engage with narratives that span the social, the political and the material, looking beyond the surface to understand how the present and the future are inextricably bound up with the residues of history.
Cost category C (501–750 CHF), 16 students. The fee includes accommodation, local transportation, two dinners, entrances and the reader. Travel to and from Istanbul is not included and must be arranged individually.
HS 2026, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Anna Clocchiatti, Florian Kilian Jaritz
Zurich Monuments
Final Discussions & Exhibition
May 27, 2026
Franck Ducotterd, Matteo Rezzonico, Nien-Hsin Lu
Wednesday, May 27th, Exhibition & Discussions, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 09:00 – 18:00
Guests: Marianne Burkhalter, Susan Hefuna, Sam Porritt
The Pleasure in Small Things
Final Discussions & Exhibition
December 16, 2025
Tuesday, December 16th, Exhibition & Discussions, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 08:00 – 19:00
Guests: Monster Chetwynd, Pierre Chèvremont, Tuukka Laurila, Nora Walter
Restaging – Reimagining: Exhibition and Discussions
October 15, 2025
Group A
Wednesday, October 15th, Exhibition & Discussions, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 10:00 – 17:00
Diploma FS 2026
Architecture School
Dance Deck, Kentfield California, Anna Halprin 1954
The FAU (1969) designed by Vilanova Artigas was an expression of the radical Paulista architecture school of the 1960s, and Gund Hall (1972) designed by John Andrews had similar grand ambitions. The HIL building tells a very different story, accidentally becoming the department of architecture when the ETH administration decided it was best to remove architecture students from the city centre where they had become too involved in the youth protests of the 1970s. The ugly brown building has never been much of an expression of our school’s desires.
This semester we will use the diploma project to explore how the HIL building can be re-structured to be a base for the department, and a more hospitable and sustainable place to meet and work. Since it is unlikely that the present labyrinth could be improved by enlargement, our efforts will be to concentrate the existing, making it lighter, clearer and more flexible.
We will also study examples of more dispersed and non-institutional learning, like Anna Halprin’s Dance Deck and Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, places that demonstrate how learning can be more flexible and responsive to both its students and to ever changing educational contexts. We will combine the idea of a central base with mutable cells, spaces in and around the city that can more closely engage with the diverse people and situations of Zurich and beyond. By working both with the centre and the non-centre, perhaps we can start to imagine an architecture school fit for the 21st century.
We will continue to collaborate with Newrope in three ‘rooms of entanglement’, workshops where content, process and place are considered in an expanded forum.
Preparation phase:
-study of alternative places of education and the preparation of journals that compile the sites, programmes and central qualities of these open and more flexible schools.
-preparation of glossaries of learning.
-preparation of atlas of the HIL building and of possible non-central sites for the future department of architecture.
Elaboration phase:
-development of specific design proposals that incorporate new programmes and ideas of learning for the new department of architecture.
Diploma, FS 2026, ETH Zürich
Chair Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso
Newrope
Ellena Ehrl, Freek Persyn
The Village
Diploma FS 2025
The project aimed to reactivate the former “Mosterei” as a contemporary cidery, capable of processing fruit sourced from surrounding orchards, silvapastures, and agroforestry systems, as envisioned during the research phase. The intention was to re-establish the Linthal cidery as a central figure in the revival of a once-thriving, now largely forgotten, regional agricultural tradition.
Upon first inspection, the architecture of the building strongly evokes the appearance of a sacred structure. The tower and expansive roof in particular create a spatial division reminiscent of a nave and transept, reinforcing this impression.
A key feature of the new cidery is the garden located behind the main building. Historically, this area housed a fruit orchard over 70 years ago. The reimagined "Mostereigarten" draws inspiration from the Hortus Conclusus and traditional monastic gardens, reflecting the initial architectural reading of the cidery as a place of identity and symbolic significance within the context of agricultural production. Like the monastery gardens, it functions as a site of experimentation, with various soil types and species of apples, pears, and other fruit trees. With the yields from the adjacent orangery and herb garden, the fruits are supplemented with products like apricots, cranberries or rhubarb in order to create new products and flavors. Selected varieties from this “laboratory” are then propagated in the nursery and distributed regionally. A new pavilion replaces the former garage and serves as a venue for public tastings, gatherings, and garden-related activities.
The original structure consists of two distinct sections: a former cow stable and an annex constructed a century ago for the original Mosterei. The stable now houses the Production Hall, where fruit is processed and pressed. The annex contains the bottling area, where the juice is packaged into bottles or bags.
The Production Hall’s spatial concept is inspired by the traditional layout of tithe barns, historically used for storing agricultural levies owed to the church. To accommodate the cidery’s modern machinery—such as the two-belt press and the washing-and-grinding system—ceiling structures have been removed and internal walls replaced with supporting columns, creating a more open and functional interior.
In compliance with cantonal food sanitation regulations, the production areas are designed to ensure hygiene and control. As the existing outer shell of the former stable is permeable, glass boxes in the interior are erected at the points, where fruit is exposed to the environment in order to keep the surroundings clean and protected.
Remoteness and Identity
Diploma HS 2024
Architecture in a Post-growth Society: Two Case-studies Around the Klausenpass
Lukas Nussbaumer
HS 2024 Switzerland at a Crossroads
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.
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
A New Museum
Samuel Tanner / Felix Affolter
FS 2024 A New Museum
Denner Schwamendingen, Group Material
Diploma FS 2024
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.
Redesigning Museums
Diploma HS 2023
Re (Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat)
Diploma FS 2023
Mariavittoria Muschiato
FS 2023 Labour Reframed
Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat
Diploma HS 2022
Simone Spillmann
HS 2022 Copies
Re form
Sophie Kalwa / Philip Einhaus
FS 2022 Re form
Reformierte Kirche Wipkingen
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
Interim, forever
Raumbörse Sihlquai
Diploma HS 2021
In unmittelbarer Umgebung des Hotels Marriott entwichkeln sich in den 70er, 80er und 90er Jahren um und auf dem Platzspitz verschiedene Szenen. Züri brännt 1980. Das Marriott ist Teil des gescheiterten Infrastrukturprojekts Ypsilon und dem Milchbucktunnel. Welten treffen hier aufeinander, voneinander entkoppelt. Die Strategie des temporären Besetzens und Nutzens von Freiräumen in der Stadt wurde in der Jugendbewegung der 80er Jahren oft genutzt. Mit leichten Interventionen wird an unbeachteten Orten Unerwartetes geschaffen. Sie spielen sich in unterschiedlichen zeitlichen und räumlichen Grössenordnungen ab.
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
As the city of Zürich is growing, the industrial and publicly not accessible areas, such as the site of the Engrosmarket, are moving closer to the city center. How do we, in future, deal with such areas which are ideally situated for their main function as a distribution center but at the same time within immediate proximity to residential quarters?
By implementing regulating elements such as doors, stairs, lights, the site is transformed into an environment where public events such as concerts, flee markets, food festivals can take place at certain times during the day and week. These performative elements refer to existing elements found on the site allowing the Engrosmakert to function as a highly specialised machine for distributing fresh goods. Through re-interpreting these elements in a new way and repeated implementation, the Engrosmarket is being transformed allowing public functions to take place at certain times and thus be integrated in the network of the city.
Making Plans for Living
Norma Clematide / Christa Held
HS 2020 Making Plans for Living, Zürich
Gawu, El Anatsui
Re-Use Ciba
With the world climate changing, resources getting scarce and humans exploiting nature, we need to rethink farming and how to change our behavior towards nature. We're not the only ones.
By using the existing storage building as a foundation, the project becomes a self sufficient machine, powered by solar energy. With the aquaponic system it is possible to harvest more and use less.
The big heart of the machine connects the lower existing part with the upper new housings - a cohabitational space offering a habitat for plants, animals and humans. Everything is connected, everything is necessary and plays a role in the whole.
Discover this cosmos of cohabitation and find yourself in richness and diversity. A symbiosis of plants, animals, humans, architecture and technology.
What is it worth?
Welche Heimat?
Petra Steinegger
HS 2019 Welche Heimat?
Society and the Image
Tanguy Caversaccio / Arnaud Pasche
HS 2019 Society and the Image, Zürich
Download Booklets
Public Building
Karina Breeuwer / Solange Piccard
FS 2019 Public Building, Zürich
SESC Pompéia, Lina Bo Bardi
São Paulo, 1986
Hidden Interiors
Luca Zehnder / Jan Helmchen
HS 2018 Hidden Interiors, Zürich
Chambre á Coucher, Charles Percier / Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine
Paris, 1812
The Ideal City
Divya Mehra / Varun Shah
FS 2018 The Ideal City, Spreitenbach
Highrise City, Ludwig Hilbeseimer
1924
Describing Beauty
Rebecca Wirz
HS 2017 Describing Beauty, Zürich
Untitled (Roma), Cy Twombly
1959
Structure and Society
Christian Ott / Philip Dörge
FS 2017 Structure and Society, Zürich
Hyatt Regency, John Portman
San Francisco, 1973
Social Structure
Enrico Pegolo / Nils Franzini
HS 2016 Social Structure, Graubünden
Building & Place Inventory
Graubünden
