The university will have to reflect back on its old task - in fact each time, again, a new task: to give the society it is a part of, the consciousness of itself which will enable the recognition of its unresolved conflicts. This ambition is constitutively one to be failed at. To want the university, without condition and knowing oneself to be constantly conditioned…
The GTA archive, exhibited and inspected, around the central model showroom now both by researchers, visitors, and students, will be source for and object of studies. In this borrowed time, rather than mining it for evidence of an argument we have already made, we read it along its grain; taking its own orderings, its bequests, its classifications, its silences, as the structure of the inquiry rather than the obstacle to it.
What was there to come ?
Arriving in Brestenberg, some paint for the elevator, wooden panels, and an image from the archive make the new entrance. Depending to the first floor, it is filled with rooms for studios, a facade for the archive, and the rounded up lecture room. Here the captivating tale of a student is lit by a chandelier found above. Following the projection of the developers, the castle will remain empty, now site and programme for studies to come.
Within the next 10 years the renovation of HIL will allow the D-Arch to depart from the Hönggerberg, leaving it partially suspended. If the renovation gives the building back to itself, the dispersal must give the school back its task. That constellation of novel sites, their programmes, their teachers and students, can only be the starting point. The castle, chosen for its uncertain future, will be placed in a kaleidoscope of projected realities refracting the institution’s image, each from new vantage points. Studios will formulate the trajectory of the site; destraction will be the method and hopefully, one outcome.