ETH Zürich   Studio Adam CarusoETH Zürich  Studio Adam CarusoETH Zürich  Studio A. CarusoETHZ   Studio Caruso

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. 

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.

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Inspired by the trans material metamorphoses and the question: Double the building or building the double? The focus of my project shifted from the building I was first looking at to its less noticeable neighbour. 

How can one become the double of the other? To achieve the transformation, the building is wrapped in a new façade that creates a new layer in front. The old walls are still perceptible in the interior as a fragment of the building’s former self, dividing the private parts from the communal spaces of the flats. The private rooms stay inside, in the old chore of the building, while the communal spaces are located in the new layer. Through this so generated extension and enlargement, a higher density can be achieved as the number of flats per floor are doubled and the quality of the space is enhanced.  Through the extension the two buildings, before visually divided by the staircase, come to touch each other and the former staircase windows are incorporated in the communal spaces of the flat. 

The building, now transformed, is read as the double of its neighbour without becoming it’s exact copy. The height, the grid’s proportions and the angle of the façade are slightly different as well as the façade construction. The concrete of one is translated in the wood construction of the other. Trough the silver painting of the wood the two different materials are perceived as the same from afar and only at a closer look the different textures are reviled. While the outside of the building tries to mimic the concrete façade construction of its neighbour, the wooden construction is explicitly shown in the interior, creating a contrast between the old and the new. 

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Chair of Architecture and Construction
Adam Caruso
The project is presented as a folder, a collection of stories, architectural details, and material understanding, to provide information about the handling of the building and propose a resource for an ongoing transformation. The pages and stories can be rearranged, offering multiple readings and interpretations of the building, architectural fragments, and the interventions.

The research project engages with the hotel building known as Marriott that opened in the 1970s as an autonomous object in the city center of Zurich.The research unfolded stories about the building from contact with the original architect of the building, the interior designers, and the Head of Engineering who has worked in the building for over 25 years. Since the opening of the hotel, the idea of a «complete work of art» has been defiant. Over the years, the building underwent numerous modifications and transformations, revealing mutable versions of itself to keep up with the changing trends in hotel architecture.The generic new interiors have alienated the building’s interior from its shell. Each trend lasts for a generation and is custom- made for international hotel guests.The real users of the building, the workers, are thereby overlooked.The spatial separation between the front and back of the house is disproportionate.

The light touch aims to transform unused or historically interesting spaces in the hotel by critically reframing the existing layers and instrumentalising what is there.The actions are planned following the skill and expertise of the Engineering Team members of Marriott who have been in charge of every change ever made. Each space is appropriated to a new programme to tell the stories I encountered and reveal (im)material values that the building holds. Old, intermediate, and new layers create new atmospheres that are characterful to reconnect the hotel to its users and stay relevant in the future.

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The project explores the relationship of existing and intervention, the simultaneity of the market and storage as the current program and the sports center as a new form of cultural use are thematised and spatially intertwined.

Juxtaposition as an instrument to create complexities and contradictions. The tran- sitions between old and new, temporary and permanent, are consciously negated, leading to a new relationship of coexisting spaces without the enforcement of any external changes to the existing building.

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With the world climate changing, resources getting scarce and humans exploiting nature, we need to rethink farming and how to change our behavior towards nature. We're not the only ones.
By using the existing storage building as a foundation, the project becomes a self sufficient machine, powered by solar energy. With the aquaponic system it is possible to harvest more and use less.

The big heart of the machine connects the lower existing part with the upper new housings - a cohabitational space offering a habitat for plants, animals and humans. Everything is connected, everything is necessary and plays a role in the whole. 

Discover this cosmos of cohabitation and find yourself in richness and diversity. A symbiosis of plants, animals, humans, architecture and technology.

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Book Final Submission
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Book Pin Up 2
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Have you ever wondered what's behind the cover?
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Booklet
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