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Architectural Design V-IX: Soft Permanence (GD A. Solanellas Terres / C. Van Noten / M. Meister)
Last Updated: 2026-06-03 00:13:58
Abstract
We will work with reused building elements to design adaptable collective housing in Zurich. Projects grow from a catalogue of found components, testing new ideas of performance, expression, and making.
Objective
Explore material reuse as a design driver Develop building envelopes through the use of reused components Design and critically reflect on collective housing and contemporary forms of living Investigate urban questions within the specific context of Zurich Explore model making and mock-ups as representational and design mothods
Content
Building on last semester's work, we begin with a simple observation: the materials we build with are increasingly already among us. Rather than being extracted anew, they are recovered from the existing fabric of our cities. This shift in the logics of extraction profoundly reshapes architectural practice and is our point of departure. This semester continues under the title Soft Permanence. In Switzerland, buildings barely fifty years old are routinely declared obsolete, demolished, and absorbed into the construction waste cycle. Soft Permanence responds by proposing architectures that are open and adaptable: buildings not as endpoints, but as temporary resting places for materials within a longer chain of transformations. Where last semester focused on reused components as structure, the focus now turns to the envelope, exploring the façade as both a performative system and a carrier of architectural expression. Through sourcing, selecting, and adapting existing elements, we will test how familiar ideas of representation are unsettled. We will ask whether reused components must conform to the norms and standards of new construction or whether architecture can operate through alternative approaches to performance. The semester will be guided by a catalogue of elements, containing over one hundred components collected from buildings across Switzerland. We begin with these elements, allowing projects to grow from fragment to whole. Rather than abstract quantities awaiting manufacture, the selected elements are materials to be visited and reimagined in new constellations. We will design collective housing and examine how reused elements can redefine domestic space and the forms of living it supports. The projects will be located on corners of squares or urban junctions in Zurich. Here, the corner condition becomes both an urban and representational question, asking how collective life is given form and how the building takes its place in the city. Guided by thinking through making, we will adopt a hands-on approach. Model making, material investigations, and mock-ups will be central tools throughout the semester.
General Information
- Language
- English
- Levels
- BSC
- Frequency
- Semesterly recurring
Examination
- Type
- graded semester performance
Course Components
| Type | Title | Time & Place | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| exercise |
Architectural Design V-IX: Soft Permanence (GD A. Solanellas Terres / C. Van Noten / M. Meister)
No teching on March 17 and 18, 2026 (seminar week)
|
|
16 h weekly |