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

Ennenda is a place with a rich history that continues to shape its identity today. The intensive textile industry has left an indelible mark, contributing significantly to Ennenda's character. The architecture and facades of Ennenda stand as testament to that era, embodying both industrial prowess and wealth.

A notable historical landmark is the hanging tower on the Trümpi site. Despite being a reconstructed version of the original, this building still defines Ennenda's landscape, evoking memories of fluttering cloths from a bygone era.

The museum encapsulates this very essence of Ennenda, represented through its facades, placing them in the context of both historical and contemporary narratives. Just as vibrant prints from around the world were once replicated for textile printing, the exhibition mirrors these facades, faithfully reproducing selected elements.

These replicated facades serve as backdrops, layered with stories from the past and present. The building already hosts various functions, and the exhibition further enlivens the area by doubling as a part-time theater where these stories come to life. It creates moments where diverse people and perspectives converge, casting familiar scenes in a new light.

The set pieces are a blend of timber frames and three-dimensional textile facades.
As a ghostly presence, these facades shift between being a backdrop for dynamic projections and standing as delicate shadows that evoke the essence of Ennenda’s past. They create an ethereal atmosphere, showing the layers of history and capture the ephemeral nature of memory, reflecting how the town's history continues to influence its present.

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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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Dancing together apart re-evaluates the accessibility to food in cities, including the socio-cultural aspect around food rituals and spaces in communities. A proposition in three acts articulates different scales on the site of Engrosmarkt, from events to architectural interventions, as an ongoing research challenging the publicness of the industrial site.

The interventions gradually disrupt, alter, and modify some existing part of the site while using and misusing what is already built. The six physical infiltrations simultaneously happen with the emergence of a community life next to the sellers and truck drivers. Programs implicating each point of the city food chain arise alongside the market. Engrosmarkt becomes a laboratory working together but still apart with the existing flows.

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The task of re-using Ciba triggered two main questions in me: Firstly, what meaning the term re-use could signify and comport and secondly, what constitutes the identity of a place.
The concept of circular economy possesses a high potential regarding the problems and questions of the CIBA areal. It is about thinking the economy in circular processes, i.e. sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, reconditioning, and finally recycling products and materials. The average demolition of ten houses in Switzerland per day and construction waste’s share of four-fifths of the total Swiss waste proves how vital circular thinking is to future architecture.
By designing the component catalogue, we can give the materials used in the Ciba Buildings an identity and therefore seeing them as a resource. However, in addition to recognising the material value, the value of the work needed to produce the component must also be considered. A building component can be looked at as an accumulation of materials, working processes, assembling operations and production design steps.
The goal of the intervention is to turn the Bau610, the former canteen of CIBA, with minimal interventions in an accessible productive space. The main task of the building is the circulation, i.e. the access for city residents and the movement of the building components.
The building components of dismantled structures are delivered, stored, processed, and distributed again. For this purpose the roof and the basement are connected by a crane in the north and a stair tower with a goods lift facing south.
The new structures are „dressed“ by the ever-changing components stored in the building and display the material accumulation and continuous process.
In this project there isn’t a finished designed building but a proposal for a way of thinking about architecture and the built environment. Instead of production- and consumption-oriented architecture we should advocate circular processes in the architecture and the building industry.
To conclude with a quote of Thomas Hirschhorn, a contemporary artist that greatly inspired this design process : “It is not about re-using, it is about working with what is there”.

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