Architectural Design V-IX: House as a Story - Story as a House (A.Fonteyne)

Abstract

This semester, we will, within ETH’s portfolio, find a way to intervene in existing buildings using the short stories of Lydia Davis as a starting point. We want to explore the potential of atmospheric and strong architectural interventions while working with sketches, models, writing and drawing.

Objective

Engage with an architecture of the senses, learning from references as well as your own experiences and memories. Look closely at existing buildings and the urban fabric through your own documentation, archival research and the creation of a fictional framework. Read and write fiction to focus on the imagination of architectural situations. Develop interventions into and onto an existing building with the attention of a writer, addressing all senses in the most conscious way. Use model-making and intuitive drawing to develop a tactile approach to thinking and making architectural proposals. Elaborate a personal discourse on scale, experience and meaning that leads to a coherent design proposal and a concise reflection on the potential of architectural qualities as the basis for durability. Communicate about the design in a conscious and critical way, referring to past and present, to art and architecture, to individual and collective endeavours. Learn to work in group with space for individual exploration.

Content

Five Houses Many 19th century houses in the center of Zurich are owned by our very own institution, the ETH. Once converted from private residences to offices, the question is now how to go the other way round. As the university is more interested in larger, flexible building ensembles, it has decided to sell them. Given the current housing crisis, the city is very supportive, as the buildings will be returned to their original purpose: a home for many people. We will explore how these buildings can be re-adapted and extended, using the language and traces of their past, to shape their possible futures. Writing Stories Using Alice Munro’s quote from the introduction to her Selected Stories, we will draw the parallel between making architecture and writing literature. As architects, we project imaginations and ideas onto spaces that do not yet exist. We sketch, draw, write and model what we have in our heads to help ourselves and others access it. We will be guided by short stories written by Lydia Davis, chosen for their affective relationship to spatial situations. They will help us to focus our imagination, but also to immerse ourselves in writing our own physical memories of space - memories that often have a universal quality. Together, we will translate our stories into houses and houses into stories. Atelier Gisel As you approach Ernst Gisel’s atelier, you are immediately reminded of the sensual expression that architecture can convey. Gisel had an extraordinary ability to create an architecture that is affective, offering its users a conscious experience of space, proportion, material and colour, while actively engaging with the natural elements: light and shade, the heat of the sun, protection from wind and rain. The Atelier Gisel will become a direct source of architectural thinking and making.

Resources