Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design

Now on display in the foyer of the HIL building at ETH Hönggerberg: the annual 'Grundlagen' exhibition. As an introduction to the field of history and theory of urban design, all first-year students investigate an urban element, and present it in the form of a diptych: an axonometric drawing and analytical text. This year the focus was on vitrines, glass-panelled cabinets or display cases. As part of shop windows and storefronts, these vitrines mediate between the public realm and commercial or cultural venues. They present consumer goods, objects of interest, exhibition artifacts and the like to passers-by, inscribing them in the urban setting. The vitrine is a characteristic element in the public space of the city, drawing the thin and often amorphous line between public and private realms, (re)presenting cultural, political, social, and commercial facets of city life. The exhibition is on display until 27 September. Tutors: Tom Avermaete, Hans Teerds, Luca Can, Pierre Eichmeyer, Melanie Kofler, Mona Lecoultre. Vitrinen: A Zurich Lexicon. Exhibition, HIL Building, 2024 by Pierre Eichmeyer, Melanie Kofler, and Jonas Pfändler. Image credits: Jonas Pfändler.

The course "A Global History of Urban Design I", together with "A Global History of Urban Design II" that will be offered in FS 2025, provides an overview of the development of cities and urban design from the earliest known settlements until today. It specifically challenges students to value this history on a broader, global scale, highlighting cross-cultural developments. The course aims to extend this field of knowledge beyond the focus on urban developments in Europe and North America, taking into account the various instances of cultural cross-fertilization that build up a global history of cities and urban design. From the earliest human settlements in India, Turkey and the Near East, the survey examines the traditional, pre-modern and modern concepts that have historically had a bearing on urban development, up to and including the dynamic growth of contemporary cities in Asia and Africa. Image: Sienna. Palio di Siena. Twice a year, 2 July, 16 August.

This fall semester, the Chair of History and Theory of Urban Design will offer a new version of the core theory course for master's students, History and Theory in Architecture IV. The course is taught by Dr. Cathelijne Nuijsink and subtitled “1990s Theories that Inspired Architecture.” Plunging back in time to the 1990s—a decade characterized by grunge, hip-hop, cell phones, Netscape Navigator, Altavista, Amazon, and famous sitcoms—students will examine how architectural theory opened up to other disciplines in response to a remarkable convergence of technological advancements alongside political and cultural shifts. We will use some of the most thought-provoking thematic issues from the 27 instalments of the journal "ANY: Architecture New York (1993–2000)" as a jumping off point for discussions in order to introduce the non-architectural theories that began to influence architecture in the 1990s. Beyond contextualizing the theories within historical frameworks and analyzing different cultural and disciplinary perspectives that have been applied to them, the course aims to foster an understanding that theories are open to interpretation and reinterpretation across time. We will, of course, also examine a plethora of architectural projects that drew inspiration from these non-architectural theories. Image credits: ANY: Architecture New York Issue 4 'Architecture and the Feminine: Mop-Up Work’ (Jan/Feb.1994) © Anyone Corporation #newtheorycourse #architecture #ethz #darch #1990stheoriesthatinspiredarchitecture #avermaete #urbandesign

Seminar Week Autumn 2024 - Designing Urban Welfare, Stockholm 1930s-2000s The role of architecture in materializing the political agenda of welfare societies continues to inspire today. While it is well understood how the welfare state gave rise to public housing programs and specific building typologies such as cultural centers and leisure infrastructure, the role of urban design in shaping these various elements into urban living environments is less well known. In line with recent scholarship on so-called ‘welfare landscapes’, this seminar week aims to broaden our understanding from ‘welfare architecture’ to ‘welfare landscapes’, and to explore the role of urban design in shaping these landscapes. Taking the urban history of Stockholm as our guide, we will visit a series of emblematic projects from the 1930-40s, when the Social Democrats started to formulate the Folkhemmet ideology (the state as ‘the People’s Home’), to the 1950s so-called ABC towns, the 1960-70s Million Programme housing, and to the various urban developments from the 1980s to today, when welfare state policies started to be eroded by neoliberal logics. More information can be found here: https://lnkd.in/eNaiZsDP Image: ‘Star houses’, housing estate by Sven Backström & Leif Reinius, Gröndal, Stockholm, 1943-46. Photograph by Lennart Petersens, in collection of the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design. https://lnkd.in/eheZJ9Se

REMINDER - Abstract Deadline on 15 September 2024 Submit here: https://lnkd.in/gY6UE6AS. Link to our website: https://lnkd.in/gGYiyczk

Next semester, we will offer the elective seminar course “The City Lived: ‘Sites-and-Services’”, co-tutored by Dr. Sebastiaan Loosen and Lahbib El Moumni.   In our seminar series ‘The City Lived’ we focus on the history of urban design, with a particular emphasis on the lived experiences in the city. Next semester’s seminar will focus on ‘sites-and-services’, an important housing paradigm that was mobilized in the context of development aid to provide cost-efficient housing for the global poor. As these were essentially unfinished projects that relied on their future inhabitants to complete their dwellings, in this seminar we discuss what we can learn from the histories of such atypical housing projects. With guest lectures by Konstantina Kalfa and Karim Rouissi. For more information, please visit our webpage: https://lnkd.in/gg7Zn8VT An online exhibition based on earlier student work can be found here: https://lnkd.in/g5m-AcC7. Image: Dandora sites-and-services project, Nairobi, 1973-1987. Interpretative axonometric drawing of development over time from serviced plots to finished houses by Pierre Eichmeyer, Leandra Graf, and Julia Tanner.

The impact that building codes have on urban and architectural development in contemporary Zurich seems obvious, but this reciprocity did not always exist. Cities and their building codes have grown and evolved simultaneously. Through codes (local, cantonal, and federal) there has been a desire from time to time to regulate the technical and economic aspects of the construction industry and to control urban growth, to define a precise aesthetic of urban space, and to ensure citizens’ safety. In this process, codes have been influenced by the existing built environment and have, in turn, influenced it from the architectural to the territorial scale. This colloquium aims at investigating how rules and regulations have influenced the outlook and character of urban spaces in Zurich. We welcome contributions that depart both form the codes and from the built environment to expose their interdependencies. We are interested in how regulation influenced the historical development of housing but also spaces of work (offices, factories, and workshops), education (schools, kindergartens, and universities), and leisure (parks and sport facilities). We also aim to explore the relationship between codes regulating mobility (automobility, public transport, railways) and the making of urban spaces. Against this background we invite a broad variety of papers, which will be presented as 20 min talks on a colloquium held at ETH Hönggerberg on 27 November 2024. The colloquium aims to create an inventory of various ways to understand the interdependency of urban codes and urban forms in Zurich. It is our intention to gather the contributions to the colloquium in a book to be published at the end of 2025. If you are interested, please submit an abstract (300 words and a short bio of 100 words) by the 15th of September 2024 at this link: https://lnkd.in/eVGFJdzm. Papers can be presented in German or English. The main colloquium language will be English. Scientific committee: - Tom Avermaete (gta, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture ETH Zurich) - Irina Davidovici (gta Archives, ETH Zurich) - Jonathan Sergison (Institute of Urban and Landscape Studies, USI) - Giulia Scotto (Institute of Urban and Landscape Studies,USI) - Sanna Kattenbeck (gta, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture ETH Zurich) - Miriam Stierle (Institute of Urban and Landscape Studies, USI)

On Thursday 20 June 2024, between 10:00-12:00, Tom Avermaete and Cathelijne Nuijsink will be chairing the session ‘Forging “Crossed Histories” of Twentieth-Century Architecture and Urban Design’ at the European Architectural History Network (EAHN) 2024 Conference held at the NTU Athens School of Architecture. In this session, we take up the methodological challenge of writing alternative histories of architecture and urban design that can be more inclusive, dynamic, and polyvocal, by exploring the concept of histoire croisée. All papers use a rich site of encounter within twentieth-century architecture and urban design to investigate the possibilities of writing a “crossed history”, as well as reflect upon its challenges. Join us for an exciting line up of presentations and discussion afterwards. - ‘Building Solidarity: Weaving Developmental Design and Participatory Action at CINVA’s Housing Lab in 1950s Latin America,’ Marta Caldeira (New York Institute of Technology) - ‘Afro-Asian Solidarity and the Modernization of Housing,’ Shivani Shedde (Princeton University) - ‘Anti-Apartheid Activists as the ‘Architects’ of a Global Community: SOMAFCO and Dakawa Settlements in a Rhetorical Perspective,’ Essi Lamberg (University of Helsinki) & Nokubekezela Mchunu (University College Dublin) - ‘Histories of Land, Grain, and Architecture across Italy and Libya, 1912-1943,’ Maria Luisa Palumbo (Cornell University) - ‘Rewriting the Land: Emerging Narratives in Sites of Indigenous Resistance in Contemporary Mexico,’ Tania Gutiérrez-Monroy (University of British Columbia) Image: Opening of the national road N3/motorway A3 on the overpass at the Thalwil exit Photographer: Comet Photo AG (Zürich) #eahn2024 #athens #architecturalhistory #conference #crossedhistories #historyofurbandesign #architecture #urbanhistory

Doctoral defense "(Re)encounters: Tacit Knowledge, Queer Experiences, and Architectural Education since the late Twentieth Century” Hamish Lonergan 27.05.2024, 13:00 ETH Hönggerberg, HIL E 71.1 
 Hamish will present the results of his doctoral research during his doctoral defense on Monday 27 May 2024 at 13:00 in HIL E 71.1. The doctoral committee consists of Prof. Dr. Tom Avermaete, Prof. Dr. Janina Gosseye, Dr. Hans Teerds, and Prof. Dr. Isabelle Doucet. Image: Scene from the International Laboratory of Architecture & Urban Design (ILAUD), 1976-1981, courtesy of the Biblioteca Civica D’arte Luigi Poletti, Modena.

For second-year Bachelor students of the ETH, we offer the survey course Global histories of Urban Design. This lecture series, which runs over two semesters, highlights the history of cities, their ground plan, and their development, starting with, amongst other examples, the first settlements in the Indus Valley, towards the early 2000s. The aim of the course is to provide students an overview of urban development and the role of design, especially from a global perspective and addressing, besides the familiar examples also the unfamiliar cases, such as the initial design and the development of Islamabad, the new capital of Pakistan (plan made by the office of Constantinos Doxiadis). Image Caption: Plan of one of the sectors of Islamabad, Constantinos Doxiadis, 1960.