After we developed strategies for the municipality of Scuol in the Lower Engadine in spring 2019, we are now deepening this knowledge with the help of current construction tasks and building sites. In doing so, we are focusing on the traditional building culture and the handling of the historical substance, but also the sustainability of the historical and new structures are of great importance.

The Landscape Architecture Studio of Prof. Christophe Girot will design a new landscape project along a stretch of the Zihlkanal that will enable a novel solution to mitigating flooding problems and improving local living conditions.

We will look for architecture that activates these processes from a pragmatic and reciprocal approach. From thermodynamics and interactions with the environment to the structure and tectonics of construction techniques. From space composition to social behaviors. Everything necessary to design and calibrate exceptional spaces. Spaces of inspiration, precision and interdependence.

Inspired by Louis Kahn‘s passionate and enigmatic interest in institutions and their origins, the aim of this studio is to investigate the possibility of a primordial architecture. A search for a “small” but essential architecture, able to define the character of an institution.

Inspired by Louis Kahn‘s passionate and enigmatic interest in institutions and their origins, the aim of this studio is to investigate the possibility of a primordial architecture. A search for a “small” but essential architecture, able to define the character of an institution.

We aim to redefine and rediscover the architecture of the institution, “an organism that carries out a function of public interest” (according to the dictionary), “a world within the world”, “a centre around which existential space is organized” (according to Kahn).

We will work with reused building elements to design adaptable collective housing in Zurich. Projects grow from a catalogue of found components, testing new ideas of performance, expression, and making.

This semester explores “Soft Permanence”: buildings as temporary resting places for materials — not fixed, but moments in a longer chain of transformations. Using a catalogue of more than 100 reused components, we will design collective housing in the Limmattal, rethinking architecture as cycles of reuse and transformation, and exploring new forms of dwelling.

The design process is part of preparing for the daily professional life of an architect. Point of departure for this semester will be nine case studies, consisting of existing, curated competition briefs from different countries and fields of work. All of the cases describe accommodation for research and teaching activities at universities.

Almost no other profession than the work of an architect allows insights into the living habits and working environment of such a variety of people. This studio is centered around the familiarization and the investigation of different work- and life conditions, not as social or political study, but as the basis for developing and connecting architectural spaces.

The Landscape Architecture Studio of Prof. Christophe Girot will design a new peri-urban park on the Katzenbach plain. The park will provide the inhabitants of Affoltern and Seebach with a new vision of public space that exploits the infrastructure, ecological value, and the productive landscape unique to the peri-urban area of Zürich Nord.

Nach unserem Semester in Arni (AG), in welchem wir die systemischen Grundgesetze des Schweizer Dorfes untersucht haben, legen wir dieses Semester den Fokus auf die spezifischen Eigentümlichkeiten, die den liebenswerten Charakter von Hüttikon als Dorf ausmachen.

This studio explores our values toward natural materials by examining them at various scales. We’ll compare modern and premodern materials like concrete vs. stone, gypsum board vs. earth, and industrial lumber vs. solid timber as well as differences in their applications, consideration of the factors that drove material transitions, and the relationship between the site and sources of materials.

By concentrating on a few built examples, we try to understand certain stories, but also observe what is repeated. Namely, how the houses are built: with the basic elements of architecture such as walls, floors, ceilings and columns. Part of the investigation seeks to understand how and why their expression changes over time, and what we can learn from this.

They are often places along big roads, adjacent to infrastructural buildings, green spaces that do not have a clear function, or leftover spaces that are created by the parcelling and division of land. Precisely these spaces interest us this semester: the ‘unuseless spaces’.

The theme of the studio is in the overriding interest for the architectural resource of the housing stock on the outskirts of Switzerland. We are concerned with the conversion of an industrial building that has been disused for decades in the rural context of the Gonzen mine in Sargans. Core topic is dealing with the phenomena of structure and space as a "negotiation" on and with this inventory.

Architecture is an act of world-building. This semester, we will become prophets of new worlds yet to come. We will learn from existing world-building practices, from science-fiction literature to architecture and game design, that is, radical imagination practices that venture into the utopian. From our newly created perspective, we will design alternative futures for the RIA Halle in Oerlikon.

Densification often feels like a threat: Buildings get demolished and residents displaced, for more square meters, but not always more or a larger diversity of inhabitants. In this semester we continue working on the question how densification could be turned into an asset to tackle and renegotiate pressing socio-environmental conditions and needs without losing existing qualities of urban life.

The studio combines a performative, sensorial exploration of this multifaceted public space with a more scientific approach and analytical monitoring techniques, and digital 3D mapping tools. We will work closely together with specialists from a range of artistic and academic disciplines, including (physical) theater, cognitive sciences, ecology, visual media and (scan) technology.

studio rhizomesDuring this semester, we will investigate the metaphor of the rhizomes. This methodology will be applied to the study of large-scale landscape and the planning of site-specific ecological, climatic and community-based corridors. This work will be developed thanks to the tools of large-scale cartography (GIS), model-making, ecological sections and speculative narratives.