Architectural Design V-IX: (GD ???)

Abstract

This semester cycle, we will focus on the most urgent issue as a global community and therefore one of the main responsibilities for the architectural practice: the climate. We will transform recent architectural landmarks along the railway yard - Zurich’s heat island - into resilient, sustainable, low-tech buildings for the climate scenarios expected in 50 years.

Objective

This studio examines different architectural realities in Switzerland through a decolonial and intersectional lens of heritage and sustainability, calling for reorientation and engaging in imagining futurities through critical research, programmatic innovations and architectural transformations. While addressing the immediate context of Swiss architectural practice, the studio aims at confronting global entanglements and systems of injustice in times of environmental collapse. As a result of extractive processes sprouting from imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and the consequent acceleration of production for maximum profit, the environment is steering into a mode of collapse and reactively evolving into increasingly hostile conditions for the existing lifeworlds, meaning human and non-human environments, which we take for granted. Through these effects of globalized machinery, the realities of local conditions and contexts are dramatically changing. Ecologies are shifting towards new orders affecting our entire planet. We believe that anti-colonial, anti-imperial and ecological struggles are interconnected. To work towards climate justice, we must work through the intersectionalities. We resist the very praxis of treating urban space as mere commodities, the spaces of which can be traded between the state and private companies, but wish to instead treat our spaces as potentialities. Currently, the building and construction sector is a key driver of the climate crisis, consuming 32 per cent of global energy and contributing to 34 per cent of global CO2 emissions. One major cause of this is the extensive use of materials like cement and steel that are responsible for 18% of global emissions and are a major source of construction waste. Therefore as architects, we are active agents of climate change. From the construction methods we propose, to the materials we select and the designs we create, how can we activate different levers to oppose damaging and extractive processes and evolve our industry into a positive agent for our planetary world? How can we work with the existing, caring for it while incorporating necessary adaptations to evolve with our environment and not in spite of our environment? We project into a not so distant future, where the climatic conditions will drastically change and have an existential effect on our lifeworld as we know it. We project ourselves at the end of the World, where imperialism and capitalism have been incapacitated. At the end of the World, we cannot depend on the infrastructures that we rely on today, for instance high-tech machinery and imported, globalized (raw-) materials. We project ourselves post the Anthropocene, where we make kin with our non-human environments and acknowledge our interconnectedness. By imagining resilient solutions in a future, we aim to discuss the present. Carbon emissions and the destruction of our ecosystems must stop now. We believe we must radically shift our perception of building practices towards transformative, adaptable, and intersectionally sustainable designs. Imagining what it would mean allows us to articulate positive solutions. As we imagine a world 50 years in the future, where the climate echoes set a new context, we question: What are the futurities of our current urban realities? During the semester we will be supported by Illias Hischier (Chair of Architecture and Building Systems) and by Fujan Fahmi (MOFA Landscape Studio). Additionally, the semester will include an opening lecture by Professor for Weather and Climate Risks David Bresch, a lecture by Eric Honegger (baubüro in situ) and a site visit with Professor Mike Guyer (Gigon Guyer).

Content

This semester we will work on the Prime Tower Site, located within the core of Zurich’s largest heat island at the intersection between the dry, open surface of the railway yard and the concrete infrastructures of the Hardbrücke. We will start by researching the changing climate and its consequences on the intersections of ecosystems, society and architecture as well as understanding the specific performance of buildings, landscapes and the environment on our site. The research in groups will converge into a collective exhibition from which we will extrapolate climatic scenarios for the future, serving as a starting point for our transformation projects. From an industrial past, to a service economy in the present towards a future where the functional boundaries will be less clear, we propose to rethink the nearly monofunctional Prime Tower Site into a future where the architectures will have to react to a radically different climate. We aim to create synergies between housing, work, leisure and other ecologies around us and question how our daily habits will change. We will propose interventions on the iconic Prime Tower, its lower annexes and the surrounding public spaces while imagining how the glazed architecture and the uncovered landscape sealed by asphalt can be transformed into resilient new architectural potentials that can actively perform against heat waves, heavy rainfall and all sorts of weather extremes. We propose to develop spaces that are made for the projected climate in 50 years, not only by resisting it but creating adaptable solutions that are not reliant on extractive and global economies, responding to our incoming needs as a society. We will discuss the meaning of sustainability and its evolution in architectural practice in recent years. We will analyse the conception of sustainability on site which has been typical, even pioneering, of its time, successfully lowering carbon emissions for the building in use, but not considering the large grey energy embedded into construction and material choices, heavily relying on sophisticated building technology. We will explore transformation strategies for the existing buildings as they may no longer fulfill their architectural and climatic properties due to the predicted climate scenarios in Switzerland. We will question the approach on sustainability found on site by examining alternative ways of creating comfort within the buildings through lowering energy consumption, developing climate responsive typologies, implementing low-tech solutions through architectural elements providing shade, natural ventilation, cooling or heating. We will consider the entire ecosystem in and around the buildings with the aim of creating synergies between inside and outside spaces, activating the landscape and vegetation for a hospitable climate for all lifeworlds. While acknowledging the architectural heritage of the site, we keep what is valuable and add, modify and take away to improve the performance and resilience for the buildings’ futurities, critically engaging with the potentials of architectural transformations of such recent buildings. We aim at maintaining their embedded grey energy while consuming minimal new resources through the refurbishments, considering the long-term life cycle of buildings, architectural elements and materials. Sustainability permeates every phase of design, every choice from the first sketch to the very last detailing, resulting in multilayered solutions. Every project will follow a clear perspective for a low-tech, resilient and sustainable transformation through different intersections and find its own unique strategy, exploring new architectural languages to overlap with the one of the Prime Tower Site.

Resources