Especially with older structures and listed buildings, the question always arises: what will their future look like? We are exploring this question by looking at an inventoried, small-scale group of buildings on Burgweg in Zurich Riesbach, working together to develop strategies for a respectful approach to the existing values.

“Each form is an active force, it creates the community, it is life itself made manifest.” These words by Alison and Peter Smithson point at a strong belief in the power of forms in the city, claiming their active force, their generative potential, beyond a mere question of appearance or taste.This semester, together, we will investigate the possibility of the form as a project in itself.

In the remaining plots of the rapidly changing Letzi area in Zurich, we are trying to determine the location (15 years after the mission statement “Letzi - principles for area development”). We look at the individual, huge areas: How does the urban life connect the street spaces and their scenarios with the areas of access and residence in the depth of the plots?

Life on earth is a precarious business. But so far, it is the only option we have. We have learned to make the most of it. But we have built too much. Centuries of over production and extraction have turned into a crisis. It is a cruel irony that our era of over extraction is being solved by doing more, not less.

This semester, we focus on limestone, its extraction and processing, and its role as a load-bearing component in structural construction systems. In the cities of Solothurn, Olten and Brugg, we develop floor plans for living and seek out the architectural qualities and aesthetic potential that arise from considering material processes and temporal cycles.

Living together means rethinking housing and investigating how architecture could host not only human needs, but also the presence and agency of plants, animals, microorganisms, water etc. Moving beyond an anthropocentric approach, it requires new spatial typologies, porous structures, generous thresholds, systems for managing water and enhancing biodiversity. .

For us Living together means rethinking housing and investigating how architecture could host not only human needs, but also the presence and agency of plants, animals, microorganisms, water etc. Moving beyond an anthropocentric approach, we require new spatial typologies, porous structures, generous thresholds, systems for managing water and enhancing biodiversity.

How can we use water with more sensibility and efficiency?With these considerations in mind, we will explore the potential of existing structures and related spaces in Biel with a specific emphasis on housing.Through strategic interventions, we aim to establish cycles within these structures, transforming them into new living environments, fostering new synergies with the biodiversity of the site.

PATHFINDER 4 is dedicated to the timeless city of LOS ANGELES: its intricate history, morphology, mythology… all canonical spatial parameters suggested by Lefebvre: political, sociological, anthropological, economical, temporal.* Our interest will focus both on the banal and the sublime, on habits and exceptions, individual rites and social encounters.

The Landscape Architecture Studio in the Fall 2022 will investigate innovative designs for flood relief in Antananarivo. It will address the peri-urban context of the city that is subject to severe seasonal flooding. The site-specific approach includes modeling of resilient landscape infrastructures to enhance the safety of neighborhoods located on the banks of the Ikopa and Sisaony rivers.

The studio is organised in two movements. The aim is to understand the relation between the making—construction, material and detail—and the meaning—context, culture and tradition—. At the start of Movement 1, the students are divided into groups of 3 persons. In Movement 2, the studio shifts towards individual work.

The consumer driven economy is not sustainable and the desires it claims to fill can never be satisfied. What should we be doing and how can we have fulfilling lives? We will start by looking at a range of life-practices. While we attempt to discern them, 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.

We will make detailed plans for living together: 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.

How can we re-define the architecture of the social-environmental agenda for existing markets? Incorporate analog and digital lifestyles? Transform market places into prototypical urban social infrastructures connecting global, regional, and local scales? Students will re-design the Viktor-Adler Markt in Favoriten in the largest arrival district of Vienna with a population of 200.000 inhabitants.

On the basis of various construction sites in Switzerland, we try to understand and use the potential of locally available resources and their by-products. This includes natural stone, metal, gravel, sand, clay, gypsum and wood as well as recyclable or directly reusable materials in the existing building stock.How can we make the origin of local and global materials visible in the building?

It all comes down to this: stone is a piece of rock made usable for men – a portion of rock used as building material.Rocks can be defined as extensive mineral bodies, composed of one or more minerals in varying proportions. Minerals are the building stones of the earth’s crust. They are stony mixtures of one or more elements (from copper, to iron, sulphur, gypsum and carbon).

In times of constant and unpredictable change, we look at textile as one of the most adaptive and comforting materials.

In this studio, we will work in a workshop and laboratory-like setting where you will research, design and test the proposed material. The material and the ways of making are not a presentation outcome of the design studio but rather, an integral part of a process of working, researching and designing. You are required to work individually in the design studio.

The focus of this semester is to challenge the possibility of glass as a building material, questioning its predominant architectural use as a pictorial frame. Miesian architecture can be understood as the merging of the modernist constructional logic of the frame with the romantic pictorial instrument of framing; expanding the gaze on the exterior site and allowing a connection to the landscape.

In this studio you will work in a workshop setting where you will research, design and experiment with the actual materials of your project. The material and the ways of making are not a representative outcome of the design studio, but an integral part of a process of working, researching and designing.