VVZ API is not affiliated with ETH Zurich. Data might be outdated or incorrect. Please view the official ETHZ Vorlesungsverzeichnis for binding information.
Subject Semester FS22 (Fachsemester) in the Field of History and Theory in Architecture (gta)
Last Updated: 2026-02-05 16:08:46
Abstract
The theme of this History Research Studio is "'Exotic' Art and Architecture in Switzerland": We will discuss issues of exoticism, orientalism and other forms of “othering”, race and national stereotypes, colonial heritages and other related topics. The Studio aims at mapping different forms of Exoticism in buildings, but also material objects or ephemeral events of the early-modern period.
Objective
Working together, we will map “exotic” art and architecture in Switzerland, by identifying and collecting different case studies. You will collaborate on in-depth research through historical materials and methods (field research, archival material, secondary bibliography), and you will develop individual projects in whichever medium fits your interests and your topic (text, drawing, image, video). The outcomes will be presented together at the end of the semester, and can have different forms: essays, drawings or other visual materials, maps or guides, models, films or exhibition concepts. The course will be organized in weekly meetings: We will begin with some introductory lectures and reading sessions, but we will mostly focus on discussing your findings and work, sharpening your tools of analysis and fostering the development of each project. Rather than individual ‘desk crits’, we will discuss each project collectively, in a round table, to enable mutual feedback and a more collective exchange of ideas. As each project develops, there will also be individual feedback sessions.
Content
Ever since Columbus’ ship reached the Americas and the Ottoman dynasty conquered Istanbul in the 15th century, Europeans have been obsessed with depicting, describing, understanding or spectacularizing the extra-European “other”. Whether fuelled by fascination or fear, this preoccupation generated a cornucopia of exoticizing imagery in books, art, architecture and household objects: From drawings of south-American “savage” natives and their houses in geography atlases, to pavilions in the form of “Turkish kiosks”, “mosques” and “tents” in the gardens of European aristocrats; and from “Chinese” vases, wall-papers or even entire rooms inside European palaces, to entire “African villages” in national expositions. Coined sometime around the 16th century and rooted in the Greek word “έξω” (i.e. “outside”), the word “exotic” summarizes the preoccupation of early-modern Europeans with defining a distant, peripheral or external “other”. This preoccupation runs parallel to the centuries-long anxiety for delineating the centre of a (European or national) “self”: The image of “exotic” places, cultures and peoples grew side-by-side with the ideological construct of a collective “European” identity, and the invention of national identities and traditions. Switzerland was also entangled in such acts of othering: As recent research has shown, the Swiss confederation did not technically have colonies, but numerous Swiss individuals participated in colonial networks, and partook in the production of exoticist imagery, art and architecture. A recent exhibition (Exotic? – Regarder l'ailleurs en Suisse au siècle des Lumières, Palais de Rumine, Lausanne, 2020-21) has demonstrated that by the 18th century Swiss households were filled with “exotic” objects and images, often placed alongside folkloric idealizations of the internal “other”: the Swiss countryside, its inhabitants and their vernacular houses. By the 19th century, such exoticizing tendencies fuelled the construction of “Human Zoos” and other public displays of exotica (from objects to living humans) in Zurich and other major Swiss cities (as Rea Brändle has shown in Wildfremd Hautnah: Zürcher Völkerschauen und ihre Schauplätze 1835–1964. Rotpunktverlag, 2013). Many of these buildings and objects are still visible in the public space of Swiss cities or in the displays of ethnography museums; others are hidden in archives. The aim of this course will be to unearth such evidence and map out these objects, images and buildings in Switzerland and beyond. The aim of this mapping will be two-fold: - First, to understand these phenomena in their own historical context, and to understand the Where, What and Why: Where did Exoticism manifest itself (in what kinds of spaces or circumstances)? What themes and forms did it favour (what kinds of images and in what styles: figurative, allegorical, caricaturesque, idealized)? And finally, why did different people in different times and circumstances reconstruct the image or form of “exotic” peoples and objects in their houses or cities? - Secondly, to compare these historical phenomena to contemporary debates about race, colonialism and cultural appropriation in Switzerland and beyond; from the toppling of colonialist statues to tracing the provenance of museum collections, and from Black Lives Matter to discussions about Indigenous land rights, migration and displacement.
General Information
- Language
- English
- Levels
- MSC
Examination
- Type
- graded semester performance
Registration & Places
Course Components
| Type | Title | Time & Place | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| independent project |
Subject Semester FS22 (Fachsemester) im Bereich Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur (gta)
Permission from lecturers required for all students.
Self dependent work.
|
No time listed | 400 h semesterly |