The last chapter of the book „Die Geschichte der ETH“ by Benedikt Huber titled der „Der dritte Standort“ from 1990 elaborates that multiple projects have proposed an extension outside of the ETH Zentrum or Hönggerberg.
„The proposal put forward by the „Studiengruppe Neue ETH Jura“ goes the furthest in this regard, proposing a new ETH Jura instead of an extension in Zurich. For reasons of state policy, ecology, and regional economics, decentralization of the teaching and research areas is being sought.“ This idea has never been further pursued but is today as contemporary as 30 years ago. The situation of the Jura, Switzerland’s youngest canton, hasn’t changed much and there is still industrial decline, unemployment, infrastructural deficits and emigration, which is even further compounded by the absence of national institutions.
But many of these challenges could become an opportunity for an institution such as the ETH; the capital city Delémont is 30 min from Basel, offers low rents and a large amount of vacant lots - and has an architectural scene that is innovative but not oversaturated. A duo of these vacant lots is the Centre Pré-Guillaume - a 1970’s shopping mall that has been empty for the past few years and the Cinema Lido - an ISOS-protected cinema closed since 2016.
The activation of the Centre Pré-Guillaume offers the possibility not just to find a new function for the building or the city but to inherently find new and innovative ways for future learning at a federal school. A handful of interventions rearrange or re-interpret the Bestand wherever needed; a building that used to be unusable for anything other than consumption becomes a testing ground for a variety of functions that HIL is not able to offer and works more like a cultural center instead of a singular school.
The Center is extended by three volumes, a Studio Pavillon and two student housing blocks and integrates the orange-tinted windows of the HIL as re-used „out-of-life elements.“ The project is therefore flexible for both scenarios: as a new, decentralized site for the ETH in the Jura or as a Zwischennutzung during the renovation of the HIL that offers multiple after-ETH use cases.