Architecture and the City II

Abstract

In autumn 2025, MAS GTA will stage an exhibition on art, the public sphere and urban planning in the city of Zurich. One of the case studies presented and the immediate context of the exhibition is the Hönggerberg campus. Here, students will examine ETH's self-representation, both in terms of architecture and urban planning as well as through the public art located on the university campus.

Objective

As a separate format of MAS GTA, the project semester is an opportunity to work on an issue in the seminar and to develop a joint product, based on the knowledge gained. The project semester provides insights into archive and source work in the GTA archive. One aim is to read, record and interpret historical sources (plans, protocols, secondary literature, etc.) in detail, to present the findings in short texts and to test other communication formats. The ETH Hönggerberg campus will be the focus of an investigation in 2025. Based on a masterplan by Albert H. Steiner, its historical urban disposition is exemplary for post-war modernism. Steiner had been able to prepare something similar a decade earlier in his function as Zurich’s director of city planning on the basis of contemporary residential areas. His development plans not only focused on the low-rise, green and traffic-friendly urban development of modernism, but also on a comprehensive aesthetic disciplining of the city. The Hönggerberg campus provides further evidence for Steiner’s approach. In spring 2025, the project semester picks up on the theme of the previous year, when the interplay of architectural and urban structures and the messages conveyed there were examined and linked to publicly supported civic art. Similar questions are addressed to the Hönggerberg campus as a now historic document. Thus, both MAS GTA cohorts will be involved in the final product via their own case studies: the exhibition presented at Institute GTA in fall 2025.

Resources