EMANUEL CHRIST & CHRISTOPH GANTENBEIN

Until recently, the office was the most normal thing in the world. No other type of building has prevailed worldwide in the course of the 20th century with such power and in such almost frightening uniformity - even here in Switzerland. Desk work has long since become the dominant activity in our society. However, for some time, and especially since the Corona crisis hit us, everything has changed. The office is fundamentally questioned. Do we still need a workplace at all? Do we really still even need a desk?

The first step of the semester project is a large-scale expedition. Our territory is Switzerland. The main goal is to create a typology of the country’s most interesting office buildings. And that's where it starts: what is an office building anyway and since when has it existed? Reaching out to all regions of Switzerland, we will be investigating many different types of architecture: monasteries, castles, townhouses, factories, administrative buildings, research hubs, etc.

Which are the particularly good and interesting examples? Does the ideal office exist? Together we will develop criteria and arguments for architectural quality and thus take position. And so, the research and analysis are the first steps of the project. It deals with the basic principles of architecture and the essence of architectural form: body, space, type, structure and material. Our studio becomes a collective architectural laboratory, where individual work is embedded within joint critical discussions, archive research, excursions, modeling and 1:1 scale experiments (as the current situation perfectly lends itself to it!)

The following step is then the transformation of the selected (ideal?) office building. Through an architectural intervention the object is transferred into the present. The open and experimental but also analytical and critical examination of an existing example proves to be an extremely inspiring and instructive process. After all, architecture is learned primarily by studying existing buildings and designs and by translating them into one's own images. The first step is traveling and looking, and this is the crucial creative act. Invention arises from the contemplation. From criticism comes change.

Our studio’s second semester is the conceptual counterpart of the first semester: research and examination of history is contrasted with a real project, in the here and now where the office of the past will become the workplace of the future.

The starting point of the design is a reflection on today's working environment. How and where is work performed and with what means? Is the much-cited "home office" really a desirable alternative to the office desk? And what role does the physical space play in this choice? Which are the spatial needs when it comes to being creative and productive? Texts, lectures, seminars, and discussions will help us to develop various theses on tomorrow’s working environment. Drawing on these inputs, the students will develop scenarios for their individual project at a specific location.

The here and now involves a confrontation with the challenges of our environment and calls for action. In our case, it also means to design responsibly. Thus, working with a renewable building material is one of the many contributions in reaction to climate change. As a sustainable material, wood offers unexpected possibilities, especially for contemporary urban architecture and it will become the compulsory material in all student projects. In the course of the semester we will visit historical as well as contemporary wooden buildings, and exchange ideas with experts.

Methodologically, "Workspace" directly draws on the previous semester "The Office": the typologies and principles studied during the first semester are further developed in the second semester’s project and linked to the specific aspects of scenario and location. The broad idea of an architectural form and type thus gets a concrete and specific formulation. And there, in its real application in a definite case, the architectural form also acquires its social, economic and ultimately political relevance. When ideal becomes real.

The Spring semester of our studio is the conceptual counterpart to the first semester: The ideal form without place and time is contrasted with the real project in an actual environment - from the ”Prachtsstrasse” of Genova to the “Main Streets” of Basel.

The starting point for the semester is a selection of twelve contemporary news articles that describe phenomena of the globalized cities: mass tourism, climate change, transportation, smart city, urban gardening, decline of retails, etc. These phenomena are already visible, but they haven’t transformed the cities to a large extend. By speculating the conditions of a changing environment, we conceive a different architecture in terms of form, type or program.

By discussing the articles, the studio developed together six theses or themes, which were applied to six main streets of Basel. The inner-city becomes a laboratory: an ordinary, central European city of average size. Here we want to test how a reality of the future, which we have conceived, could look like. Starting with atmospheric collages, which try to relate the sphere of life with architectural objects in an abstract, playful way, then through perspective montages, where the specific site and the spatial intention suddenly meet. The principles and architectures that we brought with us from Genoa, as well as the executed and unexecuted utopian projects of the past, help us to translate the spatial idea into an architectural project. Through them, we develop a vision of space into a spatial structure, an architecture.  Through continuous refinement, context, vision and architectural principles shape each other.

Even if architecture is closely related to its context, and often very precisely defined by it, architecture is autonomous in its form. No concrete condition can definitely define the proportions of a window, no social requirement can provide information about the shape of a building body. Architecture has its own principles. It is always ideal. This double identity - autonomy on the one hand and relying on a concrete context on the other - the ideal and real side of architecture is the central problem in every project. In this way our design will contribute to a possible city of tomorrow with a real and yet visionary architecture.

We start the semester with a three-day excursion to Genoa, where we will study the basic principles of a timeless, urban architecture on the basis of selected buildings. Genoa is a dense and varied port city with spectacular waterfront infrastructure and buildings high up in the steep hills above the sea. Genoa is also the city of the famous “Strada Nuova”, a Renaissance and Baroque street that is still praised today as an ideal of urban architecture.

This is where we begin our common journey of discovery, open and experimental, but also analytical and critical. The design process will follow three steps: First the documentation of the Genoese example, then the formulation of architectural principles and finally, building on these principles, a new design, the project for an ideal architecture. It is not about a place or a concrete program, but about the essence of the architectural form: body, space, type, structure and material.

Finding his or her own architectural language is the most important but also most difficult task for an architect. Because the lack of architectural vocabulary – or images, forms, structures and principles – leaves the architect speechless. This language, this repertoire of architectural forms and principles is what our studio is all about: All students develop their repertoire during the course of the semester to figure out their own notion of an ideal architecture. But ideal doesn’t only mean beautiful, perfect and aspirational, but also and foremost “based on an idea”. The students will develop individual architecture-ideas, which shall always be available and newly applicable while designing.

This process will be facilitated by references and examples – in this semester from Genoa – because architecture is learnt by studying other buildings and designs and translating them into one’s own images. The first step is to travel, go there and look. Thereby, it is crucial to understand “seeing” as the first creative act. Invention emerges from contemplation. Documenting becomes designing. And so we design new architecture by creatively and critically dealing with the forms which architectural history handed down to us.

Drawing on the principles identified in the previous semester in Milan, a new project is designed in a former industrial area on the outskirts of Basel. This confrontation with a real context here and now, allows tackling contemporary dilemmas such as how living, working and producing could be combined in an urban realm, and aims to project a potential urban future.

40 exceptional Milanese architectures were selected and analysed, to extract basic principles of architecture. The fundamental means of architectural design picked out from each precedent, were rearranged into a new project with no functional needs and no particular location: ideal architecture. A particular attention is set on the graphical representation of both the existing and the new project by means of suggestive colours and strong shadows, in order to highlight physical and spatial qualities of each design.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, Ticino was an architecture "hotspot", which strongly influenced building culture in German-speaking Switzerland and even gained international recognition. In the characteristic landscape south of the Alps where the historical centres, villages as well as agricultural structures were transformed by sprawl, a whole generation of architects dedicated their work to improve the quality of the built environment. And so, it even countered the postmodern critique of modernism with a constructive idea: What is this modernist legacy able to perform in respect of history, landscape and social structures?

The protagonists of this group, such as Flora Ruchat-Roncati, Dolf Schnebli, Luigi Snozzi, Aurelio Galfetti, Mario Botta or Livio Vacchini, have given concrete answers to this question as individuals or in various constellations and cooperation with their projects and built works: private detached houses, public buildings such as an open-air swimming pool and many schools, as well as large-scale planning of the territory.

In 1975, with the exhibition "Tendenzen - Neuere Architektur im Tessin", this heterogeneous and rich work was shown in German-speaking Switzerland in an exhibition curated by the gta, which spread the fame beyond the borders of Ticino and Switzerland. In the footsteps of the show’s legendary catalogue we will explore the phenomenon of this unique architectural scene: How could in a provincial region a whole group of people suddenly develop such a visionary idea of architecture and actually implement it in countless projects?

We will visit, study and discuss these buildings, but also hike to experience them in the landscape. Each evening we will meet various guests, including Mia Hägg and Kersten Geers – both teachers at the Accademia in Mendrisio – at the Villa of Virginia Tech in Riva San Vitale, where we are allowed to stay. The Italian photographer Stefano Graziani will accompany us and, almost half a century after the publication of the exhibition catalogue "Tendenzen", will seek a contemporary image of this now historical architecture.

Mahallas are an ancient form of „living together“, historically built around family ties and the daily life of the community. They are even integrated into the modern Uzbek constitution, which allows them to deal independently with all matters falling within their jurisdiction. Weddings, funerals, conflict resolution in the quarter and in the family, administrative activities and community celebrations take place in these neighbourhoods, which are still home to a large part of the Uzbek population. To date there are almost 10,000 Mahallas in Uzbekistan with an average of about 2,000 inhabitants. Depending of local culture, tradition, region and climate, various types of Mahallas developed over the centuries. But many Mahallas are disappearing due to high economic pressure, changed habits and lack of modern infrastructure.

A focus of our journey will therefore be the different types of Mahallas throughout Uzbekistan. On our journey along the Silk Road from Tashkent to the West we will not miss to visit important cultural sites and buildings in the cities of Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. From the monumental Koranic schools of the 15th century to the Soviet reconstruction of Tashkent after the 1966 earthquake.

The social organization of the Mahallas and their various architectural forms are of high interest because they represent alternative models of urban society. At a time when the anonymous megacity and its ecosystem are literally reaching their limits, the need for an alternative is greater than ever. The example of the Mahalla can make an important contribution to this.

With photography and film, we will capture our journey and especially the Mahallas. The internationally renowned Uzbek contemporary artist Saodat Ismailova, whose film work revolves around the ancestral traditions of Uzbek society, will accompany and support us through the trip. The photographer and publisher Giovanna Silva will also be part of the journey and help us to capture these communities and their fascinating habitat.

«Wenn wir im walde einen hügel finden, sechs schuh lang und drei schuh breit, mit der schaufel pyramidenförmig aufgerichtet, dann werden wir ernst und es sagt etwas in uns: Hier liegt jemand begraben. Das ist architektur.»
Adolf Loos, Architektur, 1910

According to Adolf Loos, only a very specific realm of architecture belongs to the discipline of art: the monument, and the tombstone. Hereby he points to the latent a-functionality of these architectures, whose built form serves a merely representational function. The site and form of the final resting place has evolved throughout history from the pyramids to the rental of a tree for burial of ashes. To the variety of rituals enacted according to different religious customs, corresponds the great extent of architectural and urban translations of the funeral monument. From the tomb to the catacomb, from the tumulus to the mausoleum, from the catafalque to the crypt, from the cemetery to the necropolis, the typology of the architectures of Death essentially evokes the idea of shelter, while serving as a tribute to past greatness, emphasized by the suggestive and allegorical meaning of art.

As a basin of cultures and religions, Italy showcases the powerful and singular position death has always occupied within society and the city. This role is translated in a collection of funerary monuments, which are paramount to the understanding of Architecture, from the Etruscan obsession with death to the Rossian urbanism of melancholy. Re-enacting a possible Grand Tour through Italian cities – and landscapes – we will visit mausoleums of the great emperors, the vast and urban Etruscan necropolis, labyrinthine Neapolitan catacombs, the Piranesian tombs on the via Appia, family chapels of the Renaissance, 19th century monumental cemeteries as well as their contemporary interpretations, in search for the fields, spaces, and devices of commemoration.

As travelling became a means of discovery accessible to a privileged few in the 17th century, touring acquired a new value for architects and artists.

Simultaneously with the start of archeological documentation, which allowed study of the seemingly inaccessible, the Grand Tour grew to be considered as an educational tool.

How did these travellers use the information gathered on their journeys, how did they make it available and implement them in their designs? In a series of Grand Tours we will first look at the interpretation in order to better look at the interpreted. This semester, we will start in England as the birthplace of so many Grand Tourists.

The chosen sites and visits in London and Bath will reflect upon two ways of interpretation. On the one hand we will look at the discoveries and sketches, the drawings and artifacts, as well as the museums and archives: the British Museum, the RIBA Drawing Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, as well as the Drawing Matter collection which will give us insights into the two-dimensional projects, the representation of architecture. On the other hand, we will appraise direct applications, where built interpretations are embedded in a contemporary context. Inigo Jones, John Nash, John Soane and Edwin Lutyens’ masterpieces will be confronted with James Stirling, Richard Rogers, and Venturi Scott-Brown’s modern translations.

OPEN PLANS is an open architectural database of existing buildings. With its unique graphical search and analysis functions for form and structure of buildings, the platform will become an intuitive instrument for typological studies.

Working with built references is essential for architecture students. In other domains, where knowledge is mostly represented in text format, successful digital instruments like google scholar facilitate the management, inquiry and discovery of existing knowledge dramatically. In architecture, a large part of the knowledge is implicitly embedded into technical drawings or models for which there is no such research instrument yet.

The aim of OPEN PLANS is to enhance the possibilities for accessing and exchanging knowledge on existing buildings and their spatial organisation. Using state of the art digital retrieval and data processing methods, it allows complex, architecture-specific queries regarding the organization and form of building types.

OPEN PLANS repository is a format imagined by the Chair Dillenburger, in collaboration with Chair Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein.

Historically built around family ties and the daily life of the community, mahallas represent an ancient form of “living together”, many variations on which can be found across the globe. In Uzbekistan, where the tradition occurs mainly as a genuinely rural space embedded within an urban context, this indigenous cultural institution takes on a specific meaning.

The mahalla is not only an administrative, hence geographic, division of a town, but also the institution that acts as a mediator between the state and society. According to the modern Uzbek constitution, mahallas are empowered to deal independently with all matters falling within their jurisdiction and as such have developed into self-governing bodies. Weddings, funerals, conflict resolution in the neighbourhood and in the family, administrative activities, and community celebrations take place in these units, where a large part of the Uzbek population still lives. There are currently around 10,000 mahallas in Uzbekistan, each with 150 to 2,000 inhabitants.

Depending on the local culture, traditions, seismic conditions, region and climate, different types of mahalla have developed over the centuries. Aggregated in labyrinthine systems, the mahallas convey a sense of proximity and intimacy while creating precise spaces of assembly that the community puts to intensive use. The vernacular two-storey courtyard buildings made of clay walls were reinterpreted in a modernist manner during the Soviet era, or even converted into prefab slab housing. Today’s iterations of the mahalla are popular among people seeking an urban-rural lifestyle, but due to high economic pressure, changing habits, and their lack of modern infrastructure, many are at risk of disappearance.

At a time when the ecosystem of the anonymous megacity is literally reaching its limits, the need for alternatives is greater than ever. Can the social organization of the mahallas and their various architectural formations as low-rise / high-density structures offer urban society a sustainable and ecological model? At the least, the mahalla deserves a critical reading and a tentative exploration.

Over two years of academic research as Assistant Professors at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Emanuel Christ, Christoph Gantenbein and their Research Team selectively analysed 160 buildings from Hong Kong, Rome, New York and Buenos Aires.

This inventory of 20th-century metropolitan and essentially ubiquitous building production represents a systematic yet subjective compilation of urban architecture.

Following-up on the preceding “Typology: Hong Kong, Rome, New York, Buenos Aires” published in 2012, the chair expanded its research on building typology to four more metropolises, again in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

180 buildings were analyzed and documented with an image, site and floor plans, axonometric projection, key data, and a brief description. An introduction and four essays on the interaction between various protagonists and in particular the effect of governing local building regulation show the potential for contemporary urban architecture. The result is a rich sourcebook of great practical value for students, lecturers and practitioners of architecture.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition “Hong Kong in Zurich: A Typological Transfer” at the Istituto Svizzero, Venice, part of the series Teaching Architecture: 3 Positions Made in Switzerland.

Nowhere do buildings express density better than in Hong Kong. Beyond the fascination with global urban phenomena or romantic patchwork-like images, it is by understanding its built fabric and analysing its architectural legacy that we can begin to grasp its manifest beauty. In Hong Kong, the immediacy of the need for both living and working environments produces pragmatic and radical answers to the lack of space, which all have a strong architectural consequence. This very precise development of new typologies hides a mannerist precision behind an unadorned bare aspect. Hong Kong Typology presents a thorough study and a precise selection of Hong Kong’s relevant building types of the 20th century. As an approach to its multifaceted collection of buildings, 36 case studies were classified in seven different categories and illustrated with photo, floor plan and axon.

Typology City Guides are unique tools to discover the underlying rules of these fascinating cities. Developed by Christ & Gantenbein at the ETH Zürich, these Applications are free to download on the App Store and Google Play (only Hong Kong). In each App, more than 40 buildings are documented with floor plans, axonometric drawings, facts and located on google map.

This inventory of 20th century metropolitan and essentially ubiquitous architecture represents a systematic yet subjective compilation of urban architecture around the world. The buildings, many relatively unknown, were chosen in order to provide a basis for looking at metropolitan design in the twentieth century, comparing the patterns and differences in building styles found around the world.

Ideal Architecture: Milano is a small collection of drawings produced by the students in the Fall Semester 2018. After a physical encounter with one of 40 selected buildings in Milano, the students were asked to represent the built project through drawings. Then, the existing building is isolated from its historical context to focus on its design intentions only. The urban form and typological lyout were worked out by strengthening, reducing, exaggerating and changing specific aspects of the building. Finally all identified principles were reassembled in a final step to form a whole, a pure architecture, an Architekton, a folly or even an ideal architecture; without any concrete program, or site.

Thanks to this experimental, analytical and critical appraisal, the student traces his or her own architectural language, builds up his or her own repertoire. By focussing on representation, the students were encouraged to trace synthetic drawings with suggestive colors and strong shadows to highlight body and space. This collection features drawings from all design steps. Put side by side the different projects, built as well as imagined, create a context of their own.

Real Architecture: Klybeck is a collection of student projects produced in the Spring Semester 2019. It features 33 visionary projects in the existing context of Basel Klybeck, a former industrial area which is currently under transformation. The ideal form without any site or age from the previous semester was confronted with a real context here and now. Actual and controversial issues were tackled such as how living, working and producing shall be all combined in an urban realm. Throughout the year, the students were experiencing the making of architecture as a cultural medium as well as a visionary tool to address the future needs of urban society. Through the technique of collages and montages, the focus of the projects were developed in close distance to the found context. Finally the architectural drawings with colors and shadows were combined with suggestive perspectives, highlighting the imagined reality from a pedestrians point of view in this city to come.