Architectural Design V-IX: Climate Echoes - Europaallee (M. Issoufou)

Abstract

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.

Objective

This studio examines different architectural realities in Switzerland through a decolonial and intersectional lens of heritage and sustainability, calling for reorientation and engaging in imagining futurities through critical research, programmatic innovations and architectural transformations. While addressing the immediate context of Swiss architectural practice, the studio aims at confronting global entanglements and systems of injustice in times of environmental collapse. As a result of extractive processes sprouting from imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and the consequent acceleration of production for maximum profit, the environment is steering into a mode of collapse and reactively evolving into increasingly hostile conditions for the existing lifeworlds, meaning human and non-human environments, which we take for granted. Through these effects of globalized machinery, the realities of local conditions and contexts are dramatically changing. Ecologies are shifting towards new orders affecting our entire planet. We believe that anti-colonial, anti-imperial and ecological struggles are interconnected. To work towards climate justice, we must work through the intersectionalities. We resist the very praxis of treating urban space as mere commodities, the spaces of which can be traded between the state and private companies, but wish to instead treat our spaces as potentialities. Currently, the building and construction sector is a key driver of the climate crisis, consuming 32 per cent of global energy and contributing to 34 per cent of global CO2 emissions. One major cause of this is the extensive use of materials like cement and steel that are responsible for 18% of global emissions and are a major source of construction waste. Therefore as architects, we are active agents of climate change. From the construction methods we propose, to the materials we select and the designs we create, how can we activate different levers to oppose damaging and extractive processes and evolve our industry into a positive agent for our planetary world? How can we work with the existing, caring for it while incorporating necessary adaptations to evolve with our environment and not in spite of our environment? We project into a not so distant future, where the climatic conditions will drastically change and have an existential effect on our lifeworld as we know it. We project ourselves at the end of the World, where imperialism and capitalism have been incapacitated. At the end of the World, we cannot depend on the infrastructures that we rely on today, for instance high-tech machinery and imported, globalized (raw-) materials. We project ourselves post the Anthropocene, where we make kin with our non-human environments and acknowledge our interconnectedness. By imagining resilient solutions in a future, we aim to discuss the present. Carbon emissions and the destruction of our ecosystems must stop now. We believe we must radically shift our perception of building practices towards transformative, adaptable, and intersectionally sustainable designs. Imagining what it would mean allows us to articulate positive solutions. As we imagine a world 50 years in the future, where the climate echoes set a new context, we question: What are the futurities of our current urban realities? During the semester we will be supported by the Chair of Architecture and Building Systems, working with IDA (Integrated Design Atlas), Fujan Fahmi (MOFA Landscape Studio) and by the Professor for Weather and Climate Risks David Bresch. Additionally, the semester will include a site visit with Ute Schneider (KCAP) and Prof. Christian Schmid among others.

Content

Our site has seen a long history of tentative planning, trying to turn the former railway infrastructure into a piece of urbanity, each time intercepted by either ecological associations, political opposition, or economic struggles. Finally from 2004 to 2020 the masterplan and a succession of competitions led to the realization of Zurich's most famous alley. Conceived for a multitude of uses and designed in steps by different planners, the completion of the Europaallee did not manage to defy critical voices. Concerns about the commercially oriented programming with luxury apartments and a high percentage of office spaces, standardized façades and anonymous outdoor spaces, accompanied the first years of the development while often being regarded as an isolated entity within the city. Finally, it has become evident that one of the Europaallee’s main challenges is its poor climate resilience reinforcing the effects of urban heat in the heart of the city. This semester we propose to rethink the Europaallee into a future where architecture will have to react to a radically different climate. We aim to create synergies between housing, work, leisure and other ecologies around us and question how our daily habits will change. We will propose interventions on the iconic buildings on site and the surrounding public spaces while imagining how the glass and concrete architectures and sealed outdoor surfaces can be transformed to actively perform against all sorts of weather extremes. We propose to develop spaces that are made for the projected climate in 50 years, not only by resisting it but by creating solutions that are not reliant on extractive economies, responding to our incoming needs as a society. We will start by researching the changing climate and its consequences on the intersections of ecosystems, society and architecture as well as understanding the specific performance of buildings, landscapes and the environment on our site. The research in groups will converge into a collective exhibition from which we will extrapolate climatic scenarios for the future, serving as a starting point for transformation projects. We will discuss the evolution of sustainability in the architectural practice and analyse its conception on our site, successfully lowering carbon emissions for the buildings in use, but not considering the large grey energy embedded into construction and material choices, relying on sophisticated building technology. We will be examining alternative ways of creating comfort within the buildings through lowering energy consumption, developing climate responsive typologies, implementing low-tech solutions through architectural elements providing shade, natural ventilation, cooling or heating. We will explore transformation strategies for the existing buildings as they may no longer fulfill their architectural and climatic properties due to the predicted climate scenarios. We will consider the entire ecosystem in and around the buildings with the aim of creating synergies between inside and outside spaces, activating the landscape and vegetation for a hospitable climate for all lifeworlds. While acknowledging the architectural heritage of the site, we keep what is valuable and add, modify and take away to improve the performance for the buildings’ futurities, critically engaging with the potentials of architectural transformations of such recent buildings. We aim at maintaining their embedded grey energy while consuming minimal new resources through the refurbishments, considering the long-term life cycle of architectural elements and materials. Sustainability permeates every choice from the first sketch to the very last detailing, resulting in multilayered solutions. Every project will follow a clear perspective for a low-tech, resilient and sustainable transformation and find its own strategy, exploring new architectural languages to overlap with the one of the Europaallee.

Resources