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Zurich Before Zurich: Geoarchitectural Speculations on the Deep Time of the City
Last Updated: 2026-06-03 00:14:02
Abstract
Throughout the semester, a variety of facets of Zurich before Zurich will be explored and pieced together, producing a collective speculation on the geo-architectural reality of the city.
Objective
- Develop an expanded environmental reflexion on the city as urban, architectural, but also geological phenomenon. Reflect on ways to associate a detailed and precise environmental and geological history to the history of architecture, and to specific buildings or geological specimens. - Identify critical research questions regarding the anchorage of Zurich in the temporalities and materialities of its geological region. - Cultivate a geological literacy, drawing from the earth sciences and the history of architecture to gain access to an idea of architecture as a site of intense relation between culture and the geosphere. Navigate through geological extraction and use, through the formation, transformation, use and after-lives of architectural materials to acknowledge our built environment as also being a repository of geo-histories. - Develop the research, writing and representation skills, reflecting on ways to articulate and mediate complex information spanning deep terrestrial history, current reality and planetary future. - Learn from precedents in the environmental humanities attempting to account for the dependency of human material culture upon the geosphere.
Content
Architecture is always a terrestrial phenomenon, and the built environment largely relies on substances extracted from the geosphere: from rock, sand, clay, to metallic ores, petroleum or gravel. This geological matter is routinely regarded as an inert realm, a passive resource to be appropriated, and although it does have a complex and eventful past, its own history is rarely ever associated to the history of architecture. Yet, now that we have become a planet-altering force and that the mutual capacity of humanity and environment to affect each other has become evident, we need to wonder how to write and represent a history of cities and architecture that stresses their relationship to geological materialities and temporalities. In geologist Oswald Heer’s Die Urwelt der Schweiz (1865), an engraving shows Zurich in the last Ice Age, covered in a glacier and populated by mammoths. A representation without humans or architecture, which gives an insight into how the city was preceded and shaped by a deep history of glaciation and mountain building, of erosion, tectonics, sedimentation and water flows producing lasting effects and material accumulations. Learning from this precedent, ‘Zurich Before Zurich’ will propose a reflection on the terrestrial temporalities of the city, accounting for its ties with the past environments of Switzerland. Through individual case studies, each participant to the seminar will investigate the materiality of our immediate urban environment, and its reliance on the geological cycles which shaped it, going from an erratic from the Rhine Glacier embedded in a façade in Oberdorf; to the Horgen coal mine; a drill core of lake sediments; or the Uetliberg sandstone deposits. This seminar will offer a space to research the geological and architectural history of Zurich; to experiment with writing, looking for the right register and voice to make complex geocultural interactions intelligible; and with representation, reflecting on how drawing, photography, video or rendering can mediate deep time. Throughout the semester, a variety of facets of Zurich before Zurich will be explored and pieced together, producing a collective speculation on the geo-architectural reality of the city.
General Information
- Language
- English
- Levels
- MSC
- Frequency
- Semesterly recurring
Examination
- Type
- graded semester performance
Registration & Places
- Max Places
- 18
- Signup End
- 16.02.2026
Course Components
| Type | Title | Time & Place | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| seminar |
Zurich Before Zurich: Geoarchitectural Speculations on the Deep Time of the City
Biweekly course. No teaching on March 19 (seminar week) and during the last two weeks of the semester.
Limitation to 18 students. Send motivation letter (max. 1 page) until February16, 2026 to:
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4 h weekly |
Offered In
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Core Courses (The core courses build on the basic courses and convey basic, broad knowledge in the core areas of landscape architecture in relation to design lessons. Some of the core courses are compulsory and some are freely selectable. Further details, in particular about taking these subjects, for performance assessments and for compensating for failed subjects, are regulated in Art. 27 and Art. 31 Paragraph 4.)
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