EMANUEL CHRIST & CHRISTOPH GANTENBEIN

In the first semester, the two methods - analytical-rational planning and artistic-personal design - are still put side by side. In the second semester, we combine them. The object-like house is replaced by an open question: What is home? What does it take to feel at home? And to what extent do demographic developments, changing role models or the climate crisis have an impact on the forms of housing? By speculating on these questions, we will try to imagine a future home. Critical texts, expert presentations, joint discussions and statistical data on society, climate, housing, etc. will provide a reasonably solid basis for visions and scenarios of tomorrow‘s housing. The scenarios will be developed in the first step by using collages. In the picture plane of the collage, the objects of everyday life enter into a relationship with people and space. Step by step we develop pictorial representations of our scenarios. In the second step we transform the spatial, typological and formal system of the buildings by means of plan collages. Paradoxically, we do not have to reinvent everything for this visionary architecture. Our extensive studies and the large collection of examples from Torino, our own typology, have already provided us with a wide range of formal and functional solutions and principles that could prove useful for envisaging the spaces. By combining typological, general principles with an individual, specific scenario, we will design a large housing project in the city of Basel that, through a real context and a concrete materiality, will translate the vision initially formulated into a real architecture.

This year our studio deals with housing. We start the semester with a three-day excursion to Torino, the northern Italian city on the Po River at the foot of the alps, capital of the Savoy dynasty and briefly of Italy, with its gridded center and city blocks, early worker’s villages and industrial settlements in the suburbs. Based on selected examples of both anonymous structures and famous buildings, we study the urban architecture of Torino. We start our common journey of discovery with an analysis - open and experimental, but also systematic and critical. Together we discover, examine and document each house, discuss and develop criteria and categories, in order to eventually compare and order them. The result of this process is our own Torino typology. Through drawings, not just mere representations, but inspired and personal depictions of these architectures we develop together a collective, common repertoire of timeless architecture. Playfully and at the same time systematically, we work on a shared vocabulary of architecture. 

Finding one‘s own architectural language within the vast vocabulary of architecture is the most important but also most difficult task for an architect - and therefore the task of the second half of the semester. Whether out of a discovered principle or a very personal fascination, each group develops an independent and experimental design: a piece of furniture, a domestic object. Bare of the necessity to fulfill a certain function, a small piece of furniture and a large house are quite alike, as objects both are shaped by formal coherence and constructive, material decisions. The medium of the semester‘s second half is the large scale model. Each of these architectural objects is an ideal house.

Accumulation describes the gradual gathering of elements. It is the law by which many great things operate, such as civilization, history, economy and not least the formation of planets. Architecture is also subject to the law of accumulation, as buildings do not appear in an instant, but are gradually put together on the building site. What are the pyramids if not an accumulation of stones? One possible answer would be to say that they are storage; an architectural response to accumulation as old as time itself. Is the traditional storage still valid today? What can spaces of accumulation mean for architecture?

With the increased focus on accumulation of capital, goods and data in today’s society, you’d think that spaces of accumulation would be an essential part of our daily lives. Instead it is suspiciously missing from the public imagination, hidden away as some-thing necessary but unsightly. It’s true that the complexity and scale of accumulation can be unnerving and as the saying goes: you don’t want to know how the sausage is made. Nevertheless, could it be necessary to understand the sausage for a sustainable future?

If given the ability to store their accumulations, a person can live differently than someone without traces. You get a physical memory of your past as well as the possibility for planning ahead and save for later. In this way accumulation can actually lead to both minimal consumption and recycling, which are important steps towards sustainability. How can recycling influence our work on architectural form and space?

In our studio, using the knowledge from the previous semester on the ideal storage, we will combine the ideal and the real in order to speculate about how recycling meets tomorrow’s space of accumulation, because we believe that answering the question about the accumulation of the future means implicitly linking architecture to the necessities and urgencies of the world to come.

We understand the issue of storage space as a urgent and constant problematic for all human societies in all historical periods. Form the prehistoric caves and jars to the city of Delphi where the ancient greeks stored for the first time in history of Europe written documents and personal belongings. From the primitive caves to the Knossos palazzo, from the roman corn warehouses to the Nevada desert, where the hidden side of our cloud society lies with his enormous amount of space used for data storage.

The act of storing something has to do with the issue of the “standard” measure. Every epoch and every society culturally defines what their standards are, based on the very necessity of their historical time, and so the architecture of the storage space adapts itself to the ever-changing standards and thus evolves. For many periods the most important conventions about storing were derived from the human body. From the weight a healthy person can lift to the way a hand reaches for an object, the body condtions storage. The rise of standards like the european norm for palletts EPAL, changed storage fundamentally. It‘s no longer possbile to perceive what is inside a container nore does it matter for the person who maneuvers a logistical vehcile. From the disconnection from the good and its vessel follows a intensely generic space like a container stock, which serves well for chases in movies but lost it‘s hospitality to humans.

Categorizing the things that our society stores, is as vast as the society itself. Along most swiss train tracks, one can observe shapes designed to hold materials in different consistencies. From liquid to aeriform to solids, from bulldozed bulk freight to stacked blocks, the physical forces demonstrate movement and storing. Figurative big scale storing is the object of many photographic oeuvres, a more familiar and personal storing happens in our portmonaies, our boxes, pockets and furnitures, designed to keep our belongings. Usually things that belong together, or are identical, are stored together. Raw materials like metals or crude oil are processed to sheets, rolled to foils, cut to strips, assembled to components and further assembled to products. In each step, storing and moving the objects defines the shape of the good, as well as the space they are stored in.

In this semester we want to look closely at the architecture of storage in Switzerland. By means of fieldwork, drawing, reading, discussion and designing we will search for the ideal in storage and propose a collection of the most interesting storage buildings. We believe that these buildings, in addition to being a crucial part of any functioning of society, possess an underappreciated beauty, and that through typological mapping have the potential to shed light on the mechanism of the built world.

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.

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.

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.

The majority of our built-up territory is the unplanned city built without a vision, the lose agglomeration of suburbia. It is probably only little exaggerated if we assume for most of the actors in the agglomeration that their buildings were, in a certain sense, only pragmatically built out of the moment and probably not at all seriously meant with regard to a further future: sometime they will be demolished anyway and then perhaps be done properly. Unfortunately, in reality it is not like that at all. What was never really meant seriously in terms of urban development has now suddenly become bitterly serious. For we can no longer afford the demolition, the tabula rasa and the new construction, if only for ecological reasons. The incoherent, haphazardly built, unsustainable city has therefore become the immutable reality of our country.

The agglomeration is not bad in every respect. It very well has its poetic, rough and beautiful side. But in terms of density and especially in terms of the relationship between places and people (public space and public transport infrastructure), the agglomeration is a problem. It lacks urban and architectural coherence, in a way it simply lacks an idea - especially a long-term one.

This is where our studio comes in. In the Basel region, we want to rediscover a piece of this city that has evolved over the course of the 20th century and systematically investigate it at a concrete location, asking the question that is as simple as it is difficult to answer: what does this city, left to us by our direct ancestors, need in order to be transformed into a sustainable future? What is the structural minimum that is indispensable to improve the existing spatial and programmatic structures? Yes, actually there is enough: “enough”, but unfortunately one must also say: very often what is there is simply “not good enough”! So there is a need for action. Our generation has the task not to replace the agglomeration with a new better city, but rather to transform it; towards a socially and ecologically sustainable city. Sustainable Urbanism.

For this generational project, we would like to develop pioneering exemplary projects with our master studio. Typological models will play a role, but they will hardly be applied directly. After all, almost everything is already there. It is rather the “typology ex post” that is to be invented here: an urban architecture that creates a new stable, interesting and sustainable urban order and architecture based on what is there.

In cooperation with the team of the chair Benjamin Dillenburger we will work with digital models and specific computer-aided tools (pointclouds etc.) in the research phase as well as in the actual project phase. They will help us to quickly and comprehensively capture what we have found in order to then use it to design the (not only virtual) new-old city. As an expert, Martina Voser will also accompany the project.

After having looked at the Bürgerhaus in Zurich last semester we would like to continue our investigation with this Master’s thesis by examining the Bürgerhaus in the Canton of Graubünden. The foundation of our research is the comprehensive work "Das Bürgerhaus in der Schweiz" published by the Bürgerhaus-Kommission of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects in the 1920s, which documents representative residential buildings from different time periods, most of which still exist today. The collection shows an impressive variety of formally and stylistically self-confident buildings portrayed with marvelous attention to detail. The reproduced plans include meticulously drawn elevations and interiors, from ceiling to floor, from tiled stove to door handle.

Considering their great age and well-preserved condition, these buildings seem to be particularly durable. We would like to critically question this hypothesis and try to precisely understand the durability of the Bürgerhaus not only on a technical and constructive level, but also from a typological, social and cultural perspective. We will re-examine the portrayed buildings in our own way one hundred years after they were documented by the Bürgerhaus-Kommission. In doing so, digital tools will allow us to directly and quickly record today's building fabric and to take a contemporary look at the Bürgerhaus.

"Das Bürgerhaus in der Schweiz" was published in the interwar period, and bears witness to a time and place specific view of the history of architecture. In addition to re-examining the buildings portrayed, we are also interested in the question: How can we take an inspired and critical look at architectural history in a consistent and durable way today? The work of the Bürgerhaus-Kommission will therefore also provide us with a case study through which we can examine questions of cultural reception and appropriation.

In the project phase, we will try to identify thematic fields that are characteristic for the phenomenon of the Bürgerhaus on the basis of the findings from our typological study and our research into the history of reception. Based on these thematic fields, we will develop design scenarios for the Bürgerhaus of tomorrow. Can the Bürgerhaus be rethought, adapted, recycled, expanded, reprogrammed, altered so that it can continue to exist?

In this Master's thesis, we would like to examine the Bürgerhaus in the Zurich area. The foundation of our research is the comprehensive work "Das Bürgerhaus in der Schweiz" published by the Bürgerhaus-Kommission of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects in the 1920s, which documents representative residential buildings from different time periods, most of which still exist today. The collection shows an impressive variety of formally and stylistically self-confident buildings portrayed with marvelous attention to detail. The reproduced plans include meticulously drawn elevations and interiors, from ceiling to floor, from tiled stove to door handle.

Considering their great age and well-preserved condition, these buildings seem to be particularly durable. We would like to critically question this hypothesis and try to precisely understand the durability of the Bürgerhaus not only on a technical and constructive level, but also from a typological, social and cultural perspective. We will re-examine the portrayed buildings in our own way one hundred years after they were documented by the Bürgerhaus-Kommission. In doing so, digital tools will allow us to directly and quickly record today's building fabric and to take a contemporary look at the Bürgerhaus.

"Das Bürgerhaus in der Schweiz" was published in the interwar period, and bears witness to a time and place specific view of the history of architecture. In addition to re-examining the buildings portrayed, we are also interested in the question: How can we take an inspired and critical look at architectural history in a consistent and durable way today? The work of the Bürgerhaus-Kommission will therefore also provide us with a case study through which we can examine questions of cultural reception and appropriation.

In the project phase, we will try to identify thematic fields that are characteristic for the phenomenon of the Bürgerhaus on the basis of the findings from our typological study and our research into the history of reception. Based on these thematic fields, we will develop design scenarios for the representative residential house of tomorrow. Can the Bürgerhaus be rethought, adapted, recycled, expanded, reprogrammed, altered so that it can continue to exist?

With this Master‘s thesis, we would like to examine the suburbs in Switzerland and, in particular, their forms of housing. The foundation of our research is the idea of the garden city. Visions of settlements that are free of congestion and combine the advantages of both the city and the countryside seem again more relevant today in times of lockdowns and home office. Concurrently, the garden city, with its dependence on the car, its low building density and mono-functionality, also stands for a fundamentally questioned way of life. We want to rediscover the gigantic potential of the garden city as a way of dwelling and use the means of digital analysis to gain insights.

Our work is a typological investigation. In a collective observation, we try to understand the architectural, cultural, social, climatic and economic conditions of the suburbs and thus the unconscious logic behind the emergence of the „suburban house“. Considered as a type, the suburban house stands in the field of tension between the rural and the urban. While the urban condition depends on the coherent arrangement of houses within city blocks and streets, the rural is based on the house‘s relationship to the earth and sky, the unspoiled view of hills and trees, and the isolated event of a house in the landscape.

But what was the suburbs yesterday is no longer necessarily so today. So at the same time, the question arises as to whether the reality of the urban city is actually still opposed to the reality of the suburban city, or whether the two are not rather simulated manifestations of the same urban reality that is spreading worldwide: «Is the suburban city being urbanized? Are the architectural ambiguity and life forms of the city encroaching on suburban cities? Has this process possibly set in long ago and merely been disguised by the style of suburban housing that has been stagnant for generations?».

We ask ourselves what it means to live in suburbs today. What forms of housing are there and how durable are they? Can the garden city, and thus the suburban house, be rethought, adapted, recycled, expanded, reprogrammed, altered so that it can live on?

With this master thesis project we want to investigate the potential of further development of historic neighborhoods in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, and develop concrete projects for this purpose. These area-wide neighborhoods, mahallas (Arabic for quarter) have grown over centuries and are closely linked to geography and seismic threat, climate and agricultural production, Islamic traditions, crafts and available resources, and different political systems. They are based primarily on the endless variation of the one to two story courtyard house type. Today, these quarters are either museumized or destroyed on a large scale to make way for often generic new construction projects at central locations in the city. According to our thesis, a lively further development of the historic quarters is not even envisaged due to a lack of possible strategies. The question of "Durability" seems to be solved: Tabula rasa is the urbanistic strategy systematically applied today. The coming semester should provide approaches to point out an alternative strategy that allows the built quarters a greater "Durability". Can traditional architecture establish a use, especially contemporary forms of living, emancipated from the traditional lifestyle? How can the necessary infrastructure develop to ensure this?

Parallel to the semester, the Architecture Biennale is taking place in Venice on the theme "How will we live together?". Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein are curating the official contribution of the Republic of Uzbekistan to the theme of MAHALLA. This exhibition contribution portrays traditional (and some Soviet) mahallas in different media and addresses this typical but little documented and discussed urban form. In this way, the discussion about the preservation and further development of these neighborhoods is to be initiated. A collaboration with the Biennale and a visit of the exhibition to Venice or the city of Tashkent is envisaged, depending on the development of the epidemiological situation.

With its steel factories and shipyards Genova occupied a fundamental role within the first industrial triangle, which individuated at its vertex the Ligurian capital, and the commercial poles of Milan and Turin. It’s within this perimeter that large-scale industrialization of the Italian economy took place between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, carrying forth inevitable modifications to the urban fabric of the historic centers and their surroundings. Its morphological peculiarity dictated by the constant juxtaposition between the seafront to the south and the steep topography of the mountains to the north, deeply influenced the expansion of the city, leading to the emergence of unique settling solutions.

Specifically focusing on the architectural production of this period, the trip sets out to investigate the relation between topography and typology as developed in the works of architects such as Luigi Daneri, Robaldo Morozzo della Rocca, Ignazio Gardella, Franca Helg, Franco Albini, and so on. Without ignoring the richness of the historical city with the palazzi of the Strada Nuova and the numerous villas scattered in the surrounding hills, we will wander through Genova’s streets looking for examples of ordinary architectures which skillfully manage to exploit the topography as an asset, using it to explore unusual ways of dealing with issues such as access, orientation, subdivision and construction. Approaching the architecture of the city through macro areas, the journey will start from the historical center and the adjacent neighborhoods of Foce, Albaro, and Sampierdarena; subsequently we will head to the western and eastern suburban expansions, to explore the social housing complexes of Pegli, Prà, and Quarto.

Confronted with unexpected urban structures and typologies, we will document our discoveries via photographs and sketches, encouraging the discussion with experts and artists who will accompany us throughout our explorations. We will actively engage with professors from the Architecture University of Genova, who will offer their invaluable knowledge about the city, its history and transformations through time, and will help us sharpen our analytical tools and shape our understanding of Genova’s complexity of inhabited forms, clutching to the mountain slope while overlooking the Ligurian sea.

In Tbilisi, we expect to encounter a city and a country of immeasurable architectural and cultural wealth. 

Tbilisi‘s history is marked by many turbulent periods. Its strategic location in the South Caucasus, on the edge of ancient and modern Eurasian empires (Persian, Byzantine, Arab, Mongolian, Ottoman, Russian), and on major trade routes, has given the city geopolitical and economic importance. This dynamic history has left its traces in the social and cultural hybridity of the city until the more recent events of the Soviet occupation and the new democracy. 

This cultural polyphony has profoundly influenced the architecture of the city, creating hybrid building typologies specific to Tbilisi. We will discover these influences by walking through the streets of different residential areas of Tbilisi‘s urban fabric, ranging from the 17th to the 20th century. 

We will discover urban structures, architectural types, ornamental styles and landscapes, which we will capture through photographs and sketches, while leaving room for discussions, specific to each architectural encounter, among ourselves or with experts. We will actively interact with the Free University of Tbilisi Architecture Program and be accompanied by its students, who will share their unique vision of their city and help us to critically reflect on the typical Tbilisian buildings, amalgams of various cultures and periods. 

Furthermore, the Tbilisi Architecture Biennale, an internationally acclaimed event, will be held during our stay and we will have the opportunity to participate in the event‘s discussions and activities which gather people from the whole region. 

In order to delve into the origins of Georgian architecture and the traces it may have left on the fabric we encountered, we will move away from the capital for two days to explore landscapes, provincial towns and ancestral buildings.

The trip will be an intense encounter with Tbilisi‘s architecture, facilitated by local personalities, artists and experts who will allow a unique interaction with this exotic yet unexpectedly familiar context.

We want to experience architecture, that was intended to store the significance of a life against the erasing effect of time. This search will lead us into immersively crafted interiors, melancholic spaces of anonymity and humble signs of human existence embedded in nature.

Leaving Zurich on Sunday morning, we will travel by bus along the river Po, cross the Apennine with its renaissance cities, and approach the metropoles in the south, from where we return by train. On our trip we will visit mausoleums of emperors, the tempietti of Alberti and Bramante, Etruscan necropolis, labyrinthic Roman catacombs, piranesian tombs on the via Appia, the monumental cemeteries of the 19th century as well as their modern interpretations by Aldo Rossi and others. As Adolf Loos pointed out in his famous quote on graves, these artefacts oscillate in between architecture and art and seem liberated from a spatial function, because their main purpose is: to remind us. Taken as objects they tend towards being pure forms and images, yet they differ from classical sculptures as they remain connected to a life-story and are deeply rooted in a place. Taken as architecture, whether we enter an underground catacomb or hike on a field, the picturesque views and scenographic perspectives, are as much part of their narrative as the symbolic meaning. We will take our time on site, to occasionally catch these impressions with charcoal on paper.

For a better understanding of these strange witnesses of other times, which have left our city-centers in the course of the hygienic movements in the Age of Enlightenment, knowledge and empathy is required. With the help and expertise of our guests, the collective study of selected texts and our observations and analytical competences as practicing architects, we will start to involve ourselves with the topic. Travelling by train and bus leaves us some time to speculate on the relevance of funeral architecture in our contemporary urban condition:

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, Bukhara and Samarkand. 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.

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.

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.

Curated by Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein as part of their research program, "MAHALLA: Urban Rural Living" was commissioned by the Art and Culture Development Foundation under the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Uzbekistan. It was developed in collaboration with Tashkent’s CCA Lab and addresses the theme of the 17th International Architecture Biennial: “How will we live together?”.

Mahallas are a form of urban organisation that is simultaneously a housing solution, a powerful cultural center and a resilient self-governing body. There are currently over 9,000 mahallas in Uzbekistan, each with 150 to 9,000 inhabitants. Due to serious economic pressure, changing habits, and their lack of modern infrastructure, mahallas are slowly being replaced by new forms of housing, even though they remain popular among people seeking an urban-rural lifestyle.

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 these neighbourhoods and their various architectural formations as low-rise/high-density structures offer urbanity a sustainable and ecological model?

Drawing on this research, the exhibition offers a scientific investigation but also an artistic statement expressed through three different types of appropriation in a 1:1 scale: a model of a mahalla house occupying the whole space of the Quarta Tesa at the Tese Cinquecentesche in the Arsenale; an invisible appropriation of the space with sounds from the mahallas transmitted through ambisonic technology recorded by Spanish film-maker Carlos Casas; and extracts of mahalla houses as fragments of spaces represented by photographs by Dutch photographer Bas Princen.

The exhibition is completed by an app to experience the house structure suggested by the soundscapes, and a catalogue. Additional content is provided in a special edition published by Humboldt Books, a carefully designed folder that features a series of prints by Bas Princen and a record by Carlos Casas.

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.

The elective course "Formalistische Analyse der neoliberalen Ideologie" analyses buildings. The analysis is based on what is built.This course is offered from spring semester 21 until end of fall semester 22. In Spring Semester 21 we analysed the example of Europaalle in Zurich. In Fall Semester 21 we analysed the example of the Richti-Areal in Wallisellen. In Spring Semester 22 we analysed the example of the Campus Hönggerberg in Zürich.

The examples of Europaallee, Richti-Areal and Campus Hönggerberg worked on in the past three semesters were each touted as fulfilling the highest demands that can currently be placed on architecture and planning. In close cooperation with the authorities, the various building owners realized projects that exemplify in the Swiss context what 'good planning' and 'good politics' are with regard to the development of urban planning and architecture. 

Instead of tracing the complex planning processes and accepting what has been built as a consequence of them, the elective turns the analysis 'from head to toe': what has been realised here? If objects cannot lie (cf. Bulle, Heinrich: Handbuch der Archäologie, Munich 1913), ideology can also be grasped from the architecture itself, provided it is questioned with methodological precision. By means of formalistic analysis, which is based on the scientific method of historical building surveys, the three examples were examined for their formal-architectural characteristics. The theses on neo-liberal architecture, which have been collectively formulated in the course of this work, will be examined in the fourth and final execution of the course. The theses will be tested by means of a formal-architectural analysis on Zurich examples to be chosen by the students themselves, in order to revise or reject them in a second step, if necessary. In a final step, the results from the analysis will be summarized in the sense of a catalog of neoliberal architecture.

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 comes before the built project. It is a prerequisite even for paper architecture. We imagine it. It is an idea at heart, and for this reason we call it "ideal". Ideal architecture is a language - a cultural coordinate system. Architects cannot do without it. Without a repertoire of architectural vocabulary – and we might also refer it to images and forms, structures, and principles – the architect is speechless.

The language of an ideal architecture, namely this repertoire of architectural forms and principles, is the subject of our studio. We aim to develop an inventory in the course of the semester.By studying existing buildings and designs, and translating them into images and ideas, we create our own architectural language..Travelling, ‘walking and looking’ is the first step. It is crucial that we already understand this looking as a creative act. From observation arises invention: documenting is a certain form of designing. By creatively, and critically examining the forms that history has handed down to us, and by recontextualising those forms, we create new architecture.

Our source of inspiration, our architectural laboratory, is Genoa. We want to find the basic principles of a new ideal – and we could also call it the timeless or urban – architecture on the basis of selected examples. By ‘ideal’ we do not primarily mean beautiful, perfect, or desirable; Instead, the ‘ideal’ is based on an idea. Ideas, however, have something personal about them, and to become architecturally operative, they must be translated into generally understandable forms or principles. Architecture is always addressed to the community; it is never merely private. It lies in this the great challenge, but perhaps also something promising – a productive contradiction. We are looking for individual, architectural ideas that can be formulated as principles that can be generally understood and discussed. Perhaps it is only in this contradiction that discussion can arise. Discussion is the glue with which an individual’s idea comes closer to those of the others.

In this present issue presents some examples of the principles that we have found.They testify the fact that architects, practitioners and theoreticians, have always struggled to formulate rules for their works – works that are often with an absolute, universal claim – an ideal architecture! At the same time, these rules and principles can be simultaneously understood as personal, individual designs shaped by the author, and as designs that nonetheless attempt to describe a universal order.

The teaching work of our studio takes place in the field of tension.The design process consists of three steps: first the portrait of the Genoa as a city; then the making of case studies, upon which the formulation and variation of architectural principles are based; and finally, a new project building on these principles. Essentially, the studio is not directly about designing based on one place, or a concrete program. It is above all about the essence of the architectural form itself – volume, space, type, structure, and material. In the course of the semester, the chosen examples are used as the impulse to create a design for a new ideal architecture - individual and universal at the same time.

Architecture is real. It is subject to the geometric laws of mass and space, to physical laws such as energy flows or gravitation. Architecture consists of matter: of wood and stone, concrete and steel, glass and plastic, reed or silicone, cork or copper, marble, PVC. It is built, constructed, joined into walls, ceilings and floors that form rooms, houses, and cities. At the same time, the architectural project is also fictional: until it is built, it only exists in our imagination. It refers to the future. In designing, an architect both anticipates and imagines a possible ‘world’ of tomorrow. Architecture always happens to be in this field of tension. It is a fundamental task of the architects to make the best decisions for our future reality.

The most exiting example of this tension between social change and built matter is the city. Historically, it is a place of commerce, of faith, of culture, of economy, of science, and of politics. At the same time, it is also a place of oppression, exploitation, epidemics and destruction. These processes transform the city. It must always be reimagined: city walls, train stations, highways, skyscrapers are silent witnesses of these changes in the structure of the city and they reveal the individual vision of a future world that belongs to each era. Based on this observation, we look for debates and phenomena in the global cities to imagine the city of tomorrow from today’s perspective and from which, we derive potential realities that are visionary, speculative, and positive. Our task as architects is then to develop concrete architectural – the real – solutions for them.

Consequently, we develop projects in an existing context. The city centre of Basel is our laboratory: an ordinary, Central European city of average size.This is the place where we want to test how a future imagined by us could look like. Starting with atmospheric collages, we try to relate the sphere of life with architectural objects in an abstract, playful way. We then move to perspective montages, in which the concrete place and the spatial intention meet abruptly. In the translation of spatial idea into an architectural project, we (re)visit the principles and architectures we have taken with us from Genoa, as well as the realised and unrealised utopian projects of the past. They are the resources with which we translate the vision of a space into a spatial structure, an architecture. Context, vision and architectural principles continuously shape each other through the increasing degree of refinement.

Even though architecture is in a close relationship to its context, and is often very precisely determined by it, it is autonomous in its form. No concrete condition can conclusively define the proportions of a window, and no social requirement informs the shape of a building. Architecture has its own principles. It is always also ideal.This double identity, the autonomy on the one hand and the anchoring in a concrete context on the other hand, the ideal and real side of architecture, is the central problem in every project. In this way we will design a contribution to a possible city of tomorrow - a real and yet visionary architecture.

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.