Architectural Ecology III: In the Archive (FS 25)

Thinking through architectural ecologies—as in the relationships of living things to their architectural environments—is as old as the first built structures, that much is clear by now. But why then has an environmental history of architecture, until today, failed to positively impact the nature of present-day building? Considering this failure as a shortcoming in the writing of history, this seminar delves into the repositories of historical knowledge: archives. Looking at three different types of archives—those collecting oeuvres of architects, records of companies, and photo albums of families—the seminar aims to identify archival gaps, seek for alternative readings of evidence, and write counter-histories of the plural relationships between architecture, ecology and the environment.

Each student works with a single archive, either of an architect, a company, or a family. From this material, you will select 10 documents, to compose a visual essay with captions of about 250 words each, framing an environmental history of Swiss architecture. Examples of contributions can be as diverse as tracing the evolution of the insulation of flat roofs in the archive of a specific architect; to studying the interactions between a tilestove in an Engadiner house with its inhabitants through the photographic archive of a family; or unpacking the ways in which Sulzer centrifugal pumps, used in hydropower infrastructures in Africa and Latin America, contributed to the exploitation of local ecologies.