February 4 - 18
This winter school will combine theoretical and empirical field research, engaging with local practitioners and stakeholders. It will function as an interdisciplinary think-tank, exploring the requirements to make cities more inclusive for all. The focus will be on opportunities and challenges provided by the two emerging cities of Cartagena and Santa Marta, Colombia.
This winter school will challenge you to work in an intensive, cross-cultural setting identifying new development potentials in complex, real-life contexts.
Mid-sized cities in Latin America are growing at unprecedented rates. Struggling between globalization, modernization, and local traditions, these emerging cities are characterized by great social and spatial disparity. The decisions made over the next decade will have lasting consequences on long-term demographics and economic growth. In this short time window we face the challenge to respond to these high demands on resources, such as land, infrastructure, and energy.
Are these boomtowns doomed to follow the pitfalls of rapid urban development? Can they be tackled by integrated and inclusive solutions, rather than generic and fragmented interventions which exclude the challenged local communities?
This program is part of an ambitious, three-year collaboration with the Inter American Development Bank’s Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ESCI) and the Swiss Ministry for Economic Cooperation (SECO). Building on the existing ESCI Action Plans, the winter school will lead to its own urban assessment and identify potential proposals for future project developments. The outcomes of the course will lead to a concrete project proposal, influence decision makers, and engage with real issues.
ETH will focus on the two emergent Colombian cities of Cartagena and Santa Marta, which are facing the specific challenges of coastal urban centers, such as mass tourism, social inequality and chronic flooding. We will examine, analyze, and compare the two case studies in order to produce meaningful urban strategies to influence urban policy. In teams, you will contribute with your expertise and unpack the realities of sustainable development within a tropical climate. How can knowledge from ETH be combined with Colombian research and translated into a Caribbean context? Through debate, community appraisals and collaboration, it is expected that you question the preconceptions of socio-spatial inclusion and sustainable urban development, to produce scenarios which integrate your different disciplines.
This immersive, three-week winter school will be structured in four interlocked modules:
In the first module you will investigate the city of Cartagena and gain a strong understanding of its social, environmental, mobility and built contexts. Through intensive fieldwork, you will employ analytical mapping and empirical methodologies to integrate and synthesize knowledge across different disciplines.
In the second module, you will develop a series of alternative solutions for an integrated and inclusive future of the city. You will build on the research from the first module, and explore the potential of your ideas with local stakeholders and professionals from your fields. You will document these scenarios using creative and varied representational methods.
In the third module, you will explore the neighboring city of Santa Marta, repeating the research and discussion steps of the first modules. From these case studies, you will develop a comparative analysis which should inform and correct your initial assessments.
In the final module you will pitch your recommendations to decision makers. During this event you will measure their preferences, debate the associated trade-offs, and provide a series of orientations for those planning the future of Cartagena and Santa Marta.
Back in Zurich, you will be asked to gather all your findings into a final report, which will be presented to SECO and delivered to the other ESCI partners.
Enrollment
We are looking for enthusiastic students currently enrolled in a PhDs or Masters program in ETH Zurich, Colombian Universities and other academic institutions around the world, particularly from developing countries. A group of 10 ETH students from the D-ARCH, ISTP and D-BAUG departments will be selected. Priority given to the ISTP PhD candidates of the Urban Research Incubator. D-ARCH students receive 4 ECTS.
Applicants should have a strong interest in sustainable urban development, urban poverty and socio-spatial exclusion, policy development and transdisciplinary collaborative research. They should be able to demonstrate their academic strengths, motivation, interest and expertise. Knowledge of Spanish is welcomed but not obligatory.
Applications can be submitted including curriculum vitae, portfolio where relevant and letter of motivation as portable document format (pdf) to Marie Grob at grob@arch.ethz.ch
Application deadline: November 21st
Notification for admission: November 30th
 
The winter school includes accomodation, group transportation, on-site activities and guides.
Each student will be responsible for obtaining his flight ticket to and back from Cartagena, visa and travel insurance; meals and any other personal expenses.
ISTP students receive a 400 CHF contribution for their flight ticket.
Dates in Zurich: 25th of January and 20th to 24th of February 2017.
Dates in Colombia: 4th to 18th of February 2017.

Transdisciplinary Work-Lab for Architects, Engineers, Economic and Social Scientists

Winter School: Cities for All

Teaching

October 22 - 30
Students will travel to Havana, Cuba as an extension of the Urban-Think Tank Design Studio. This trip will serve as a critical study of the architecture, urbanism, culture, and social exchange in Havana with a specific focus on the recent and projected transformations of the city. The trip will aim to investigate how a city can be upgraded and modernized while maintaining its rich layers of history. It will observe, first hand, creative solutions from residents while engaging in larger debates about development in the face of urban change. City and architectural tours, museum visits, lectures and talks from local experts in architecture, urban planning and history will constitute the majority of the trip. The trip will be conducted in partnership with the Chair of Sociology (D-ARCH, ETH), and the Faculty of Architecture (CUJAE, La Habana), from which local Cuban students will also join.
Starting with the UNESCO World Heritage site, La Habana Vieja, in the East and moving West through neighborhoods like Centro Habana and Vedado, it is possible to understand Havana’s urban evolutions from a colonial trading port to a paradise of early Latin American modernism. However, Havana’s size and population have not considerably grown since 1959, while massive urban development can be observed in other Latin and Central American cities. The Cuban decentralization policy, resolutely applied after the revolution in 1959, favored medium-sized to small towns and rural regions, effectively leaving the urban development of Havana at a standstill. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, Havana’s urban fabric began to decay as the state lacked the necessary resources to carry out even the most basic maintenance work. Today, with the possibility of the U.S. blockade being lifted at any moment, Havana is faced with the challenge of upgrading its city to meet contemporary challenges while remaining true to its revolutionary ideals.
Notes
Enrollment in this seminar week is NOT required but is highly recommended for students in the PORT OF HAVANA Design Studio. The trip is open to max 20 students, but space is unlimited for students enrolled in the design studio. If enrollment is full online, please contact Danny Wills (wills@arch.ethz.ch) to sign up.
Visa
Each passenger traveling across any international boundary is solely responsible for obtaining all necessary travel documents, including any required visas, a valid passport and for complying with the laws of each country flown from (the departure country), through (any transit country) and into (the destination country). Neither the ETH Zurich nor the travel services provider nor the booking office can be charged for inconvenience and costs as a result of failure to obtain a visa.

Preserving the Future

Start 26.01.2016
In this design studio, students were tasked with proposing how systems of informal placemaking and architectural activism could improve a complex urban site in Grønland, Oslo. ‘Informality’ was posed as a subject open to debate and discussion, encouraging students to develop personal positions on topics such as planning regulations, design codes, community participation, and architectural agency.
The studio included a research trip to Morocco, during which architectural and urban insights were drawn from experiencing a context rich in street life and intensified areas of trade. Divisions between ‘informality’ and ‘formality’ merged and interlaced. 
The final design brief called for ‘a task of translation’ in which students reflected on their design process and the influence their experiences in Morocco had on their design intentions. Site analysis, on-site interventions, theoretical readings and precedent studies were translated into a design strategy relevant to Oslo, Norway.

A Task of Translation

Making the Motherland

July 14 - 22
For the first phase of Hello Wood’s design-build ‘Project Village’ in July 2015, Urban-Think Tank devised the ‘Migrant House’, a simple structure that provided the initial point of orientation for a community of travelers. Its towering form created a sense of identity for this disparate group of individuals, while its open frames were slowly filled in with the remnants of past lives. The resulting bricolage represented the collective embodied spirit of those that temporarily chose to inhabit its spaces, at the same time planting foundations within the broader Project Village.
Now that the initial seeds have been sown, it is time to grow a community.
Our proposal for Project Village II seeks to transform the idea of the Migrant House into a dynamic concept of ‘Migrant Hous(ing)’. Each individual will arrive to the site with his or her individual unit – a series of rotating frames that can configure into a multitude of spaces based on personal need. These units have material limitations that prevent the individual from building complete solitary housing. However, as the individuals begin to form relationships – friendships, groups, romantic entanglements – the units can transform. Only through a collective force can the units fulfill their structural potential and exert their limitless combinatorial possibilities, testing the true nature of community building.
Urban-Think Tank is currently developing practical housing strategies embedded within community driven processes. The Migrant Hous(ing) project builds upon ideas of modular construction, community capacity building, rapid and incremental upgrading, and quick, prefabricated assembly and disassembly methods. The structures themselves are migrant in nature. Their ability to be transported and rapidly installed, transformed, and dismantled is key, and a major performative element. The project questions how displaced individuals begin to establish relationships with other traveling migrants. What are the spatial structures that allow assemblage, growth, reconfiguration, and transformation? Can architecture preserve individual identity while contributing to integration?

Location	Csóromfölde, Hungary
Team	Prof. Alfredo Brillembourg & Prof. Hubert Klumpner, Danny Wills, Gianmaria Socci
With	Hello Wood - hellowood.eu

Migrant Housing

Hello Wood Project Village