Through a combination of practical exercises in video and audio techniques in parallel with the study of seminal observation-driven texts like ‘The Social Life of Small Urban Places’ (Whyte) and ‘Learning from Las Vegas’ (Ventouri and Brown), this course aims to equip students with the basic tools and core principles to create short but complex portraits of urban space.

This approach will be applied to the case study of Oerlikon, an area that has undergone multiple transformations in scale and typology over time, resulting in a mosaic of mixed industry, high and low-density housing, mobility infrastructures, and cultural fabrics.

Using widely available recording tools and editing software, students will develop short video or audio works of about 3-5 minutes.

An optional Architecture and Urbanism Film Series running in parallel to this course will provide an opportunity for interested students to triangulate their learning with viewings of classic and experimental documentary work.

The Swiss Mittelland is, like similar zones across Europe, the place where new urban realities are emerging. One of the Swiss regions most affected by extremely rapid growth over the past 50 years, it is in the process becoming a classic example of continuous urban sprawl. Though ostensibly a network of villages and major cities, in reality these various locations constitute an uninterrupted metropolis.

The task of the A-Topic Masters Thesis for FS 2017 is to envision an urban design project that allows for future development in a selected area in Egerkingen. The village is part of the Canton of Solothurn, and sits at the crossroads of the Swiss Plateau’s key transport arteries. The proposed construction of a privately funded cargo tunnel, the Cargo Sous Terrain, has been widely discussed in Switzerland. With the first 70 kilometers of this new underground transport system scheduled to be completed within the next two decades, the villages of Härkingen and Niederbipp have been identified as two of the eight hubs that will feed into the network. Egerkingen lies in between the two villages and stands to expand further as a base for logistics and transportation.

Students are invited to experiment with alternative urban-rural paradigms and address the development of urban qualities for what is still largely viewed as a traditional village rubbing up against a surrounding built environment designed predominantly for logistics, industrial, and retail uses. Projects produced for the A-Topic Masters Thesis will potentially serve as prospective case studies, which could be scaled, adjusted, and multiplied for other areas in the Swiss Mittelland.

Diploma Thesis A

Swiss Mittelland

Teaching

Known for its brothels, booze, and brawls, Zurich’s Langstrasse is our focus for this elective. The area’s recent rebrand – “Tribeka: sublime chic, oriental cuisine, precise craftsmanship, and the finest coffees” – is a recipe for gentrification. This transformation demands to be questioned, and with it, a new form of response by architects and urban planners. We call on you to take Action.

In this course, we develop new forms of urban literacy by learning to read and act on the city. Through lectures and group discussions, we will explore lessons in advocacy planning and architectural agency, developed through theory from Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s seminal book, “Learning from Las Vegas,” and other contemporary texts. Together with a parallel studio at the University of Valencia, we will explore new methods of mapping and understanding the city, “recasting quotidian landscapes as objects to be analyzed rather than ignored or denigrated” (Scott Brown). Finally, we will develop small-scale, temporary, physical interventions, using Langstrasse as our site, to discover active means of analyzing and shaping equitable civic space.

With this agenda, the course intends to support creative action in the city and instigate a new curiosity for the role of architects working in the urban environment.

Learning from Langstrasse

Action! On The Real City

In broad definition, the “migrant” is a person physically displaced from their home due to a variety of reasons. Escaping corruption, unemployment, poverty, conflict, war, or environmental destruction, these travelers leave behind their established communities in hope for a better, more secure life. They take many forms —expatriates, immigrants (illegal or legal), asylum-seekers, refugees, workers, pilgrims, nomads. However you choose to call it, one thing is common for all— the loss of home and all the things that come with it, a shelter, a job, a livelihood, a community.

The Migrant House proposes to challenge this phenomena of displacement through an inquiry into what defines a community center and how, through this space, one can rebuild shelter, safety, integration, economic security, and spirit. Combining the programs of PUB, CHURCH, and BORDELLO for their contrasting and potentially perverse takes on the establishment of community, the project merges a medieval European pilgrim house typology (Alms house / Ale house) with Urban-Think Tank’s ambition for dignified housing.

Our current work in Cape Town, South Africa focuses on practical strategies to alleviate a national housing crisis, while remaining embedded within community-driven processes. The proposed project for HELLO WOOD will build off of the same constraints of modular construction, community capacity building, rapid and incremental upgrading, and quick, pre-fabricated assembly and disassembly methods. The structure itself will be migrant in nature. Its ability to be transported and rapidly installed is key, and a major performative aspect of the project.

How can we imagine structures that both assemble, grow, shift, transform as the pilgrim grows and plants foundations within a new community? How can the structure build community spirit through its space and function, allowing for passing nomads and permanent residents alike to find orientation through a meeting place, a resting place, a place of integration?

Location	ETH Zurich, ONA / Oerlikon
Team	Professor Alfredo Brillembourg, Professor Hubert Klumpner, Clearhos Eduardo Papanicolaou
ECTS Credits	2
Mondays	10:00 - 12:00
Research Partner	Polytechnic University of Valencia, Prof. Eva Álvarez, Prof. Carlos Gómez

Action! On The Real City

Observe. Record. Edit.