This semester we will continue questioning Museums as institutions, buildings and practices. Our focus will shift to Basel, a city with colonial entanglements and a rich museum history, to work on the Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig. We will deepen our research on the Museum’s ecology, imagine new programs and reshape the role of the institution through architectural transformation projects.

We will question Museums as institutions, buildings and practices. Through the 19th and 20th centuries, Museums have been active agents of colonization and dispossession. The studio will work within the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich and the Rietberg Museum. The program will reshape the role of the two Institutions in their context.

We will focus on the most urgent global issue and a main responsibility for the architectural practice: the climate. We will transform recent architectural landmarks along the railway yard - Zurich’s largest heat island - into resilient, sustainable, low-tech buildings for the climate scenarios expected in 50 years. Following our work on the Prime Tower, we are shifting towards the Europaallee.

To follow

In a time of environmental collapse, economic fragility and rapidly aging societies, we are becoming more and more vulnerable, yet we live painfully separate and segregated lives from each other. We no longer have the built infrastructure to live together, even though we clearly need one another, as was made painfully evident by the COVID global pandemic.

This semester we will continue questioning Museums as institutions, buildings and practices. Our focus will shift to Basel, a city with colonial history, and work on the Museum of Antiquities. We will deepen our research on the Museum’s ecology, imagine new programs and reshape the role of the institution through an architectural intervention, in a future with no objects to display.