Architectural Ecology II: A History (HS 24)

As soon as modern science started to measure, adapt, and shape its surroundings, the environment became part of the architectural debate. Amid the current crisis, the seminar explores the longstanding yet often overlooked relationship between architecture and the environment, which has continually evolved with societal, economic, and cultural shifts, revealing a range of architectural responses.

The seminar aims to trace the long history of architectural ecology to better understand its specificity and urgency today. It will help students to critically discuss texts on the topic by examining multiple sources from different disciplines, periods, and geographies. A continuous link to historical practices will provide the necessary methodological tools to question today’s approaches toward ecological awareness in architecture.

Climate change confronts architecture with a series of new and complex challenges that are reflected in a specific vocabulary. Even if the perspective and urgency of today’s debate are new, the environment and architecture’s relation to it have been part of the architectural discourse for a long time. In this context, a historical investigation becomes crucial to understand what ecology means for the architectural discipline nowadays, and how it evolved throughout the decades. While last year practice-based approaches were investigated, this year’s seminar will focus on specific architectural components such as facades and roofs, as well as the interplay between infrastructure, architecture and ecological awareness in the Swiss context. Although architectural and technical responses have evolved over the centuries, these same elements have consistently encountered recurring environmental challenges, leading to solutions and theoretical insights that have, at times, been overlooked or forgotten.

The seminar will include input lectures, close readings of texts, and discussions with invited experts from different fields. Students will be asked to explore the roots of the Swiss environmental history of architecture by looking at several sources from different disciplines that intersect with architecture.