Focus: Architecture & Energy
Module Leader: Prof. Annika Seifert
Lecturers: Prof. Annika Seifert, Prof. Luca Deon
Assistant: Lucas Sager
Grenzhof
In the Spring Semester 2020, we will develop different scenarios for the future of the Grenzhof schoolhouse grounds and their potential role in the growing urban fabric of Lucerne.
The Grenzhof (German „Grenz“ = boundary, border) is located in the nor-thwest part of the city in a heterogeneous area that occupies a key position in the effort to increase the city’s population density; it is characterised both by long-time residents and migrant families recently relocated here. It is bordered to the north by the heavily trafficked Kantonsstrasse and to the south by the green space of the Sonnenberg. As early examples of the modern school architecture of the post-war period, the existing schoolhouse buildings are historically significant, but they are heavily contaminated by naphthalene. Continued use as a school is therefore impossible. To convert the site for new functions, students will work out a detailed approach to their individual designs while taking into account urban-planning, architectural, societal, eco-logical and economic arguments. They will decide between three conceivable scenarios: renovation, expansion or redevelopment of the site.
The future programme for the site has three focuses:
1. Multicultural market: Weekly market and permanent retail facilities
2. Community centre: Rooms for cultural events, crafts, gatherings
3. Work & Play: Child care for children of all ages supplemented by co-working spaces for parents
In developing our approach to the existing buildings, the proposed spatial programming, as well as the construction, and choice of materials, we will familiarize ourselves with the topic of Grey Energy.
Focus: Architecture & Structure
Module Leader: Felix Wettstein, Ludovica Molo
Lecturers: Felix Wettstein, Ludovica Molo, Thomas Kohlhammer
Assistant: Dr. Marcela Aragüez, Mulan Sun Buschor
Water & Beauty
This semester we will be continuing with the research project „The Culture of Water“, which began jointly with the Kyoto Institute of Technology (KIT) in the autumn semester of 2018. The main goal is to study architectural, living and landscape conditions around Lake Lucerne and Lake Biwa, located northwest of Tokyo, the largest freshwater lake in Japan. This is the fourth semester of the five-year research project, which aims to offer a multifaceted contribution to the analysis, discussion and architecture around both lakes. We will use the architectural design as a creative method of research to develop plausible solutions to contemporary building with, on and next to water.
In the first semester of the research project, we studied general aspects of the connection between human settlements and natural habitats in direct contact with water as well as how architecture is designed when water is not just an element of the landscape but is also regarded as a design tool. In the second and third semester, we addressed the topic ‘Water and Danger’, looking at particular sensitive parts of Lake Lucerne and Lake Biwa. In this semester, we will turn to a new and supposedly antithetical theme: „Water and Beauty“ and return to Lake Lucerne for it.
Dealing with the concept of beauty is a challenge that will confront us during the entire design process, beginning with planning on the territorial level and continuing on to structure and construction. Too often, beauty is reduced to a chic façade or a trendy material. But superficial beauty is not what interests us. Inner and enduring beauty are what preoccupies us in connection with architecture.
Focus: Architecture & Material
Module Leader: Prof. Dieter Geissbühler
Lecturers: Prof. Dieter Geissbühler, Dr. Uwe Teutsch
Assistant: Anthony Frank
St. Ottilien – the „Waschhüsli“ as catalyst
Starting out from Adolf Loos – Changes in the old way of building are permissible only when they are improvements. Otherwise stick to things as they always have been. For truth, even if it be hundreds of years old, has a closer connection with our inner being than the untruth marching along beside us. – we are convinced that very much can be learned from this „old“. But that also means that new architecture can make use of the knowledge of the ancients. It is not sufficient to copy the old, however: it requires reinterpretation, invention, both in terms of architectonic form and housing form as a way of living. In that spirit, new, contemporary hypotheses must be worked out based on the local environment and atmospherically charged projects developed through architectural interventions.