What are the areas of interest for a new generation of architects?Which research questions are burning under your nails as architecture studentsand what are the new territories to explore?This course tests different ways to stake out your own subject areas, explore territories, formulate questions and carry out your own experiments in the field.

Independent and scientific thesis on a monographic or thematic topic within the scope of the history of art and architecture.

Independent thesis on a monographic or thematic topic within the scope of the History of Art and Architecture.

Class matters – in Architecture, Art and DesignThe subject of this seminar is the relationship between architecture and social class.

Class matters – in Architecture, Art and DesignThe subject of this seminar is the relationship between architecture and social class.

Class matters – in Architecture, Art and DesignThe subject of this seminar is the relationship between architecture and social class.

What is the materiality of the digital and what significance do digital media have for the experience, use and production of real environments? The course discusses works of art and architecture that explore or redefine relationships between digital, physical and social spaces.

In this Wahlfach you become an active curator for a touring exhibition.

You participate in the curatorial work of the thematic exhibition "Life Without Buildings". The tutors are Adam Szymczyk (curator and artistic director of documenta 14), Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen (gta exhibitions). Throughout the semester you are introduced to numerous artists, architects and authors visiting the course.

Hast Du schon einmal der Reiselust entsagt und versucht Dir diese Reise vorzustellen? Was bedeutet Reisen im Zeitalter des Post-Holozäns? Das Seminar untersucht die Relevanz der Seminarreise als Format im Architekturstudium und forscht gleichzeitig nach möglichen Alternativen aus der Perspektive von post-anthropozentrischen und postkolonialen Diskursen.

The seminar discusses histories of cultural displacement in the postcolonial space.

How is knowledge constituted in the contemporary university? Barbarians at the gates, but with notebooks in hand, we will pay attention to the role of metaphor, of image, and of procedure in each context. In the accompanying seminars, we will ask ourselves, what can beginning from position zero teach us about architecture, about architecture education, and about knowledge in general?

A brief assignment within the History of Architecture completed in writing and/or in the form of creative work is integrated into the Architectural Design project.

Works in the integrated discipline art and architectural history evolve in close connection with projects in design.Textual and creative works are possible. The length of the text or the extent of the creative project will be decided upon individually.Interested students are asked to develop a (textual or diagrammatic) concept sketch explaining the content and the form.

This course investigates how architecture in colonial and postcolonial Asian cities evolved, highlighting the emergence of “Asian modernism” through nuanced processes of adapting, resisting and reinterpreting Western paradigms.

What makes an architect great, and who decides what counts as a masterpiece? Through readings, discussions, and archival visits this seminar explores how ideals of genius and singular authorship have shaped architectural history and how collective, feminist, and everyday practices challenge these narratives foregrounding architectures of care, informality, and even failure.

Before we design buildings, we travel: as a source of education, imagination or visual appropriation. This course examines the relationship of travel with architecture when it was institutionalised as a crucial part of the professional competence; confronting different historical modes of encounters with today’s practice.

What happens if we think about the archive through our bodies? Can we see archives as fragments of personal encounters instead of an impersonal all-encompassing institutional authority? The course critically approaches museum institutions, archives and the politics of value in the postcolonial and centres the body and its contigencies to think towards the museum and archive of the future.

Since the 1990s, there is a vivid discourse on “Artistic Research” – an artistic approach, which is characterized by different interconnections to other fields of research. In the seminar, we will read a selection of texts and will – in artist’s studios or at the Graphische Sammlung – discuss with artists how they would define “Artistic Research” and what strategies they use.

In autumn 2024, two exhibitions take place in Zurich focusing on Switzerland and its colonial interdependencies. In the seminar, this topic will be addressed using the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich as an example. The students will research a selection of works from the collection, read specialized texts and discuss the jointly visited exhibitions.