ETH Zürich

Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design
Prof. Dr. Alexander Lehnerer
Department of Architecture
HIL G 74
Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5
8093 Zurich, Switzerland

The City as the Critical Project of Architecture

Ever since architecture discovered the city as its domain, there has been a critical and fruitful debate regarding how these two relate to one another. One is clearly always part of the other, is comprised by the other, sometimes contained in the other. At least the city and architecture always condition one another. The city is the one big project of society and therefore naturally challenges architecture as a cultural project. The productive and intellectual impetus of the inconclusive negotiation between the two lies exactly in the confrontation of the individual with the collective, text with context, the political with the planned, and the autonomous with the cultural. These dialectical moments of inquiry outline what the discipline of architecture has described as a third typology, an architectural project that operates between two seemingly contradictory states creating friction that leads to alternative and subversive outcomes.

This search for a third typology has led us to investigate collective form and its physicality as a result of historical and contemporary processes, as well as projective/speculative conception—at a scale larger than a building and smaller than a city. The methodological analysis of collective form includes comparative observations, critical commentary, and the search for strategic tools that can be employed to simultaneously shape and understand our built environment in order to produce specific public qualities as cumulative effects. The results are thematic formats that can be read as critical discursive urban projects, both as research and pedagogy, but never obliged to only one single scale.

In this third typology, between the big and the small, theory and project, sign and object, the speculative reality of architecture develops its truly striking potential.

The individual research projects are conducted within three disciplinary modes of inquiry: the history of architecture, the mediums in which architecture communicates, and architecture’s disciplinary versus cultural concerns. Within this research framework, the chair searches for examples, narratives, rationales, and manifestos of how architecture is both a product of as well as an influential force behind the form and culture of the world’s infinite anthropogenic fabric.

Relatives

FS 2017 The Architecture of Bureaucracy

The former fortification of Zurich from the 13th century is still perceivable in the city’s layout. Streets were built on top of ancient moats. The Fröschengraben moat on the left side of the Limmat River for example had been turned into a sewage drain and the prestigious Bahnhofstrasse was built over it. The path of the city wall itself is still visible in the row of buildings which where built in its place. Those buildings follow the ancient wall in their orientation and shield the old town, which lies behind them. In this sense, the city wall continues to exist but in a different architectural manifestation.

The plan of Jos Murer from 1576 shows the fortification as a key feature of the city. Alongside the church towers, the watchtowers and gates present themselves as landmarks and overlook the surrounding buildings. In the 19th century they were all torn down one after another as the city wall became obsolete.

We suggest giving the “city wall” its towers back as an act of bureaucracy in the form of a revision of the “Bau- und Zonenordnung” (BZO) of Zürich. The towers should be positioned at important places in the urban fabric along the former city wall. Our new buildings will overlook their surroundings in the same way as the ancient towers. We imagine those buildings as contemplative guardians of the city rather than severe guards. Much like the ancient watchtowers and gates they are related to each other but interact with their respective contexts in different ways.

We see the examination of the historical city structures as a way to further develop the existing city in a very specific manner. Through the re-enacting of historical structures, new buildings can be integrated into the city’s framework in a self-evident way.

Project by: Fanni Müller Philippe Niffeler