Finally, this Overview
Finally, this Overview
Introduction 15 September 2026, 10 am
Studio Caruso Archive, Various Authors, 2011-2026
In this last year of the Chair, we will look back with fresh eyes at fifteen years of research and design work. We will reflect on our archive, the collective endeavour of around a thousand students, and see what happens when the Palais Royal meets Sophie Calle, and when the Bank of England meets Theaster Gates. With invited collaborators and using new tools, this year we will take full advantage of finally having this overview.
This semester we will work on a large site in Zurich that while part of the city’s public infrastructure has always been a territory with limited public access. A place where the slaughter of animals and the distribution of meat will soon end, and public conversations within the local neighbourhood have already begun about imagining the future of this place. The city is assessing the heritage values of the site, and its economic and programmatic potential. For us, the future of the Schlachthof is an opportunity to heal the difficult karma of the site and to imagine what the civic could mean in a future when different actors, and not just humans, are given agency, where diverse ideas of programme and not just those of production, are allowed to flourish. We are interested in arranging the site in looser and more iterative ways so that new uses and constituencies can be accommodated as they emerge as part of an ongoing process. The mosque, the hospice, the caravanserai were places of care and exchange where society would both arrange and represent itself, where space became civic. Can we imagine the grand hall, the access yards, and the warehouses of the Schlachthof becoming locations for pleasure, care, propinquity and for the enactment of new kinds of civic life in Zurich.
Construction and writing as integrated disciplines are included in this course.
11 September 2026, 11:00 am, Pierre Huyghe Exhibition, Fondation Beyeler
15 September 2026, 10:00 am, Studio Introduction, ONA E30
HS 2026, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Anna Clocchiatti, Florian Kilian Jaritz
The City in the City
Seminar Week: October 19–23, 2026
İstanbul, Matrakçı Nasuh, 1537
Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul… all cities whose complex histories can still palpably be felt as part of the present. An ever-expanding settlement, this was the capital for three empires, both trade route and centre. For much of its history this has also been a place of diversity and tolerance, a place with many languages that welcomed foreigners to become part of its heady demographic mix.
We will travel to these cities on the Bosphorus to visit both the sites of empire and the fleeting places of everyday life. With the guidance of local colleagues, we will engage with narratives that span the social, the political and the material, looking beyond the surface to understand how the present and the future are inextricably bound up with the residues of history.
Cost category C (501–750 CHF), 16 students. The fee includes accommodation, local transportation, two dinners, entrances and the reader. Travel to and from Istanbul is not included and must be arranged individually.
HS 2026, ETH Zürich, Studio Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso, Anna Clocchiatti, Florian Kilian Jaritz
Zurich Monuments
Final Discussions & Exhibition
May 27, 2026
Franck Ducotterd, Matteo Rezzonico, Nien-Hsin Lu
Wednesday, May 27th, Exhibition & Discussions, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 09:00 – 18:00
Guests: Marianne Burkhalter, Susan Hefuna, Sam Porritt
The Pleasure in Small Things
Final Discussions & Exhibition
December 16, 2025
Tuesday, December 16th, Exhibition & Discussions, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 08:00 – 19:00
Guests: Monster Chetwynd, Pierre Chèvremont, Tuukka Laurila, Nora Walter
Restaging – Reimagining: Exhibition and Discussions
October 15, 2025
Group A
Wednesday, October 15th, Exhibition & Discussions, ETH Zürich, ONA E30, 10:00 – 17:00
Diploma FS 2026
Architecture School
Dance Deck, Kentfield California, Anna Halprin 1954
The FAU (1969) designed by Vilanova Artigas was an expression of the radical Paulista architecture school of the 1960s, and Gund Hall (1972) designed by John Andrews had similar grand ambitions. The HIL building tells a very different story, accidentally becoming the department of architecture when the ETH administration decided it was best to remove architecture students from the city centre where they had become too involved in the youth protests of the 1970s. The ugly brown building has never been much of an expression of our school’s desires.
This semester we will use the diploma project to explore how the HIL building can be re-structured to be a base for the department, and a more hospitable and sustainable place to meet and work. Since it is unlikely that the present labyrinth could be improved by enlargement, our efforts will be to concentrate the existing, making it lighter, clearer and more flexible.
We will also study examples of more dispersed and non-institutional learning, like Anna Halprin’s Dance Deck and Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, places that demonstrate how learning can be more flexible and responsive to both its students and to ever changing educational contexts. We will combine the idea of a central base with mutable cells, spaces in and around the city that can more closely engage with the diverse people and situations of Zurich and beyond. By working both with the centre and the non-centre, perhaps we can start to imagine an architecture school fit for the 21st century.
We will continue to collaborate with Newrope in three ‘rooms of entanglement’, workshops where content, process and place are considered in an expanded forum.
Preparation phase:
-study of alternative places of education and the preparation of journals that compile the sites, programmes and central qualities of these open and more flexible schools.
-preparation of glossaries of learning.
-preparation of atlas of the HIL building and of possible non-central sites for the future department of architecture.
Elaboration phase:
-development of specific design proposals that incorporate new programmes and ideas of learning for the new department of architecture.
Diploma, FS 2026, ETH Zürich
Chair Caruso
Emilie Appercé, Tibor Bielicky, Adam Caruso
Newrope
Ellena Ehrl, Freek Persyn
The Village
Diploma FS 2025
The beauty of care and the grace of hosting are deeply rooted in the human nature. In the small village of Rüti, the threads of architecture and agriculture gently weave together.
At the heart of this lies empowerment and the importance of a connected social fabric.. Over time, care has evolved into a powerful, life-sustaining force, blending domestic, reproductive, and productive labor. Creating spaces for gathering becomes an act of resistance, spaces where public life and care intertwine. Over time, these spaces transform into places of communal return. By reimagining care as collective, we begin to envision new systems, ones built not on isolation, but on interdependence.
Despite their historic coexistence, architecture and agriculture have drifted apart. In Rüti, this separation is evident in the lack of infrastructure for communal gatherings, harvesting celebrations, or just the simple life. At the same time, the built environment remains tailored to narrow age groups, making it increasingly difficult to foster long-term residency, particularly in the context of an aging society and future generations yet to come. How do we reconnect across age and time - interweaving the threads of care and the act of hosting?
The dining table becomes a powerful metaphor for this shift - a central site of gathering, nourishment, and connection. As an instrument of care, the historical concept of the Konsumverein - 19th-century consumer cooperatives that laid the groundwork for the Genossenschaft model - is reintroduced. These self-managed collectives enabled workers, farmers, and civil servants to bypass commercial markets and ensuring access to essential goods. In this, local food production, fairness, and mutual care become acts of resistance and renewal. The urban kitchen -no longer just a place to cook- becomes a social tool of care. It challenges the nuclear family model, addressing issues of care, gender, and age. Shared domestic spaces begin to blur the boundaries between living and working, private and public. In this shift, care is no longer attached to the home - it becomes part of the public realm.
Within this landscape of care, figures like the healer and midwife reemerge - symbols of feminine knowledge and empowerment, deeply tied to natural medicine and traditional herbal practices. This connects care to the land, to healing, and to the quiet power of nature. These small gestures of growing, cooking, and eating together- form the blueprint for a new way of living. By desinging homes that are inclusive and intergenerational, its possible to incite people of all ages to live, work, and care under one roof at a metaphorical table.
Hosting becomes more than shelter - it is an act of memory and comfort - extending and taking care of both people and nature. These are spaces of communal return, where the roles of guest and host, caregiver and receiver, dissolve into mutuality. By gently layering new architectural gestures onto existing built environment, architecture and agriculture begin to intertwine, giving rise to a new social fabric. Fine threads of intervention - nearly invisible - accumulate into a resilient fabric of care.
Remoteness and Identity
Diploma HS 2024
Switzerland at a Crossroads
Monica Ciobotar
HS 2024 Switzerland at a Crossroads
IEA Lecture
All buildings are beautiful
October 9, 2024, 18:00
Adam Caruso
IEA Lecture Series HS 24
Practice What We Teach?
ETH Zürich, ONA, Fokushalle
A New Museum
Diploma FS 2024
The Anna Göldi Museum is located in Ennenda and is housed in the historic attic of the former Hänggiturm. It is barely recognizable from the outside and only the large letters ANNA on the chimney indicate that the museum is situated on the Trümpi site. The museum does not only tells a forgotten story of witches and women from another time, but also recalls the global influence and power of the textile industry in Switzerland.
In the first phase of the research, I looked at the content of the exhibition in the Anna Göldi Museum and took a closer look at the textile industry around Ennenda. As my grandmother was one of the workers in the Uznach spinning mill, I chose a very personal and intuitive research method. In the book Untold Stories I collected tellings of different women and recorded them as a collage in my book. The collected material is very diverse and highlights specific aspects that the women experienced and that concerned me. The aim was not to find a single truth, but to use the medium of the artist book to make them visible side by side without judging them.
On the ground floor of the museum, an additional program is to be provided that the residents of Ennenda can use and appropriate the space. As an exhibition, the women in my book have been given a space as a reminder of them and what they have experienced. Each of these spaces has a domestic character and does not correspond to the authoritarian character of a typical museum. Everyone should find their own access to the museum and new stories should be able to develop side by side in this new place.
In addition, a new park is to be created, which will become a visible center in Ennenda where people can meet or simply go for a walk. A water basin and a pavilion are located in the spacious area and give the outdoor area its character. The structures are simply designed, showcase the traditional craftsmanship of the area and provide another space for the clubs in Ennenda to appropriate and benefit from.
Redesigning Museums
Diploma HS 2023
Re (Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat)
Diploma FS 2023
FROM SELLING PRODUCTS TO PRODUCING SALES TO LIVING PRODUCTION
Cedric Leneveu
FS 2023 Labour Reframed
Reframe, Rearrange, Repeat
Diploma HS 2022
Re form
Lea Muttoni
FS 2022 Re form
Kirche auf der Egg
IEA Lecture
You cannot take risks without failing
March 15, 2022, 18:00
Adam Caruso
IEA Lecture Series FS 22
One Building, Failure Is an Option
ETH Zürich, ONA, Fokushalle
Interim, forever
Lino Mercolli / Sereina Fritsche
HS 2021 Interim, forever
Raumbörse Sihlquai
Diploma HS 2021
This project is a continuing dialog that aims at rendering visible the already existing, yet overlooked practices on site while re-attributing value to their process. It func- tions as an ongoing program of modification within the hotel framework that will better profit from the existing socio-cultural resources. A series of action and interven- tion varying in time and scale will generate a never-en- ding dialogue between the hotel and its actors in order to sustain change by fostering a light but durable change in the long term.
While remaining non-disruptive, a series of small-scale actions will reveal the value of the existing practices. With simple mean such as improving access to, or re- locating existing programs, light programmatic change will spread throughout the hotel while empowering their actors. New processes will be creating along the way al- lowing for the emergences of new relationship between the landmark and the social life of Zürich.
Women Writing Architecture
Website Launch
June 30, 2021
The website womenwritingarchitecture.org was launched this week on June 30th. The new resource, an annotated bibliography of writing by women about architecture, is now publicly accessible to discover, browse and contribute to.
Making Plans for Living Together
It is time to ask the right questions. Because our world as we know it is in deep crisis. The one I ask myself calls in question the field of architecture irself.
This project has the aim to name and interrogate the motivations that push to destroy, to build new, always more, again and again, to throw away the faded, the preference to replace instead of repair. In other words, our very capitalist way of doing architecture.
And to propose an alternative.
Melliodora, Hepburn Permaculture Gardens
Making Plans for Living
Daniela Burki / Ramona Köchli
HS 2020 Making Plans for Living, Zürich
Assisi, Giotto di Bondone
Re-Use Ciba
Luisa Overath
FS 2020 Re-Use Ciba, Basel
What is it worth?
Welche Heimat?
Victor Stolbovoy
HS 2019 Welche Heimat?, Zürich
Society and the Image
Luisa Overath / Jue Liu
HS 2019 Society and the Image, Zürich
Public Building
Philippe Bleuel / Gent Ibrahimi
FS 2019 Public Building, Zürich
Half Moon Theatre, Florian Beigel
London, 1985
Hidden Interiors
Xingjian Lia
HS 2018 Hidden Interiors, Zürich
Bürgerliche Wohnstube, Verlag Schneider Esslingen
1840
The Ideal City
Divya Mehra / Varun Shah
FS 2018 The Ideal City, Spreitenbach
CIAM City, Le Corbusier
1930
Describing Beauty
Untitled (Roma), Cy Twombly
1959
Structure and Society
Sarah Rohr / Sovachana Keo
FS 2017 Structure and Society, Zürich
Dome, Brodsky & Utkin
1990
Social Structure
Laura Favre-Bully / Alix Gasser
HS 2016 Social Structure, Graubünden
History & People
Graubünden
