This project is a prefabricated construction system that explores a modular, structural and vertical arrangement of a series of track and field sports (volleyball, martial arts, running track, weight lifting area, basketball, etc.). Three have been built in Caracas, while versions will soon be constructed in Amman and More
The city of Portland has initiated a series of planning measures to improve the quality of its urban core and metropolitan area by introducing limits to territorial growth, densification strategies, and networks of public transportation. Comprised of a system of street cars, bus lines, and light rail trains, More
Located at the east end of the San Fernando Valley, Hansen Dam is one of five flood control basins within the larger Los Angeles area. Hansen Dam is administered by the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks, making it an infrastructural landscape overlaid with athletic facilities and hiking More
This research project investigates forms of formal and informal urbanization processes against the background of both high-end development projects promoted by foreign and local actors and a context marked by prevalent urban poverty. Using Addis Ababa as a case, the goal was to devise tools and strategies for More
At the request of the Chur Lake Association and in cooperation with representatives of the city of Chur and the Canton of Graubünden, a rough concept for a water landscape on the Chur Rossboden is being developed. The questions of landscape architectural design, subsequent city development potential, ecology, More
The Zürich-born garden architect Gustav Ammann was a key figure during the first half of the 20th century in garden and landscape architecture in Switzerland. Nationwide, his work includes over 1700 projects and around 230 publications. He is regarded as a gifted designer and a critical leader of More
The dissertation presents the first comprehensive critique of the work of Dieter Kienast and covers the period from the 1970’s to the 1990’s. It intends to show to what extent Kienast developed a new aesthetics for designing with nature in the city through his investigation in methods of More
Representation of Urban Landscapes in Berlin Through Film This transdisciplinary study discusses the construction of urban landscapes in feature films and their implications for design practice. It defines the urban landscape as a changing cultural construct comprising the spatio-physical facts of manmade landscape in the broadest sense, along More
Alp Transit is creating a major tunnel to link the Lombardy region & Lugano to the north of Switzerland. In the forage process, 3.7 millions cubic meters of inert stone material will be removed from the Sotto Ceneri mountain range and be amassed at the Depot site. Facing More
The design of a changing landscape for the island of Dordrecht in the Rhine Meuse Delta of Holland This Landscape Architecture Studio investigated future adaptations of the urbanized low-land region of Dordrecht in Holland. Whenever water management and land use are challenged by growing climate change, landscape architecture More
Test sites: Village of St. Moritz & UNESCO World Heritage Convent St. John Mustair The observation of landscape development over time is one of the crucial factors for the research, analysis and the associated interventions in the field of landscape architecture and spatial planning. In the proposed project More
Living with flood risk is still the common condition of most European cities, from Alpine valleys to coastal deltas. However, how we conceive of disaster and the means to protect ourselves have both evolved radically, through centuries of extensive reclamation and channeling that have made floods less likely More
Theodor (1810–1893) and Otto (1844–1906) Froebel are two of the most important personalities of Swiss garden design of the 19th century. With their multifaceted œuvre, they made a significant contribution to the emergence of Swiss landscape architecture in the 19th and 20th centuries. Above all, Theodor and Otto More
This dissertation investigates the aesthetic experience of nature, following debates in German Philosophical Aesthetics from the 18th up to the 20th century. It argues that in modern conditions the landscape constitutes an aesthetic counterworld to the ‘reifying’ sphere of the technical. More specifically, the work will claim that More
Within the design process, what methods are needed to identify relevant information from the abundance of data sets available? How can the data be visualized in order to derive subsequent meaningful decisions for the design? We explore these questions experimentally in the MAS LA Module: Programming Landscapes. While More
The doctoral thesis «Cultural Laboratory Seoul» aims to decode culturally-rooted design concepts in parks and open spaces in Seoul. It seeks to examine the perception and meaning of these historical concepts, and proposes a translation into contemporary landscape design. In the second half of the 20th century a More
The dissertation «From Rarity to Everyday Culture» shows how the Zurich Botanical Garden succeeded, in a country without seaports or colonies and far from large horticultural centres, in introducing new plants through trade and exchange, in spreading them in garden culture and in acting as an active mediator More
Auditory impressions have a significant impact on how people perceive and evaluate their environment. The rustling of the leaves, the tapping of the rain, or the children’s voices as they escape from the schoolyard play an important role in the aesthetic and spatial experience of what we call More
The street has always been one of the most significant public spaces. Particularly in Asian cities, the street – not the square – remains even today the most important location for the activities of daily life. In Tokyo, the street is not merely an area for traffic, but More
Book project: Reports on plant production Based on reports, the background and sphere of influence of tree nurseries will be told and depicted. The relationship between people and environment will be examined from the perspective of plant production. In the foreground is the story of the various continents, More
The theme of paradise is presented in eight illustrated essays that are based on individual and collective activities: community gardens in Berlin, war gardens in Iraq, the prayers rugs of Muslims and eruvs, which are fences that enclose a Jewish residential area and allow the circumvention of the More
The streets have always represented the arteries of the life of a city. A city without streets is unimaginable. Compared to plazas and parks, street space is often seen as secondary and treated as such. There is no discipline that takes responsibility for them. However, the streets are More
As part of the 13th International Architecture Biennale in Venice entitled ‘Common Ground,’ the contribution of the Chair of Günther Vogt took the city itself and its public spaces, in the sense of an Allmende (common land), as its starting point. To determine the subjective perception of this More
Man is a ‘Geomorphic Agent’. As the most important factor in the shaping processes of the earth, nowadays we move all together far more material than all natural geological processes combined. The removal, transportation and deposition of raw and waste materials have already reached unprecedented proportions in the More
The abandonment of agricultural land and the general withdrawal from inhabited, cultivated and farmed areas is a growing global phenomenon that the Chair is exploring in greater depth as part of its research. Triggered by complex processes and various factors, the current extent of abandoned land has reached More
As part of the research project NFP 65: Urban Potential and Strategies in Metropolitan Territories, the Chair of Günther Vogt examined the existing and relevant standards of urbanised and urban landscapes and open spaces in the Metropolitan Area of Zurich in the module Urban Space. On the level More
Landscape architecture has become increasingly important with the advance of urbanisation. Architecture students increasingly need more landscape architectural expertise for their designs and interdisciplinary cooperation. The project responds to this fact and develops a web platform that provides quick access to design-relevant knowledge for architecture students. Resulting from More
Laying claim to and reinterpreting large swathes of landscapes lying close to residential areas for urban recreational use is a contemporary phenomenon that can be observed in many metropolitan regions of Europe. This change in the use of landscape as an economic resource to its use as a More
Architecture of Territory—the ETH Zurich Chair of Architecture and Territorial Planning – dedicates its work to forms and processes of territorial urbanisation, arguing for the necessity of architect engagement at territorial scales. Since 2011 Milica Topalović has been attached to the ETH Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, studying More
Sustainable cities and settlement systems through science, by design, in place, over time Future Cities Lab Global (FCL Global) addresses the globally significant challenges of rapid regional transformation, and aims to create a better understanding of the relationships between cities, rural communities and their surrounding regions, so as to More
The research project, Urban Potential and Strategies in Metropolitan Territories, provides an qualitative contribution to the current urban and spatial development debate in Switzerland and thereby does not differentiate between the urban, suburban or peri-urban categories, but rather along the selected urban qualities that have crystallized out of More
The Large-scale Virtualization and Modeling Lab (LVML), open to all department units, was reopened in 2009 in cooperation with the Institute of Landscape Architecture of Prof. Christophe Girot (ILA, today: LUS, D-ARCH) and the Chair for Planning Landscape and Urban Systems of Prof. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey (PLUS, D-BAUG). It More
Application period: 1 January 2025 – 31 March 2025. Master of Advanced Studies in Urban and Territorial Design ETH Zürich D-ARCH LUS and EPFL ENAC HRC, joint master programme.
Seit jeher wird das Gotthardmassiv als das Herz der Alpen verstanden. Stückweise wurde die Landschaft in den vergangenen 150 Jahren durch die Infrastrukturbauten ergänzt. Mit dem neuen Gotthard-Basistunnel verändert sich die Wahrnehmung dieses Raumes erneut. Das interdisziplinäre Forschungsprojekt Gotthard Landscape Infrastructure untersuchte unsere Wahrnehmung dieser für die Schweiz so bedeutsamen More
Christophe Girot has been a Full Professor of Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich since 2001. In 2005, he founded the Institute for Landscape Architecture (ILA). In addition to his academic activities, he is a practizing landscape architect and owner of Atelier Girot in Zurich.
Christian Schmid is geographer, sociologist and urban researcher. Since 2001, he has been a lecturer in Sociology at the Faculty of Architecture of ETH Zurich. Since 2009 he has been Titular Professor at the Faculty of Architecture of ETH Zurich. The Lectureship of Sociology functions as an independent teaching body of the Faculty of Architecture (D-ARCH) of the ETH Zurich.
From 2003 to 2018 Kees Christiaanse was Full Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the Institute for Urban Design at the ETH Zurich. From 2010 to 2015 he led the Future City Laboratory (FCL) programme at the Singapore ETH Centre (SEC) in Singapore, which is researching current urbanisation processes worldwide.
Professor Hubert Klumpner has been a member of the chair for Architecture and Urban Design at the ETH Zurich since July, 2010. He lectures the course entitled Introduction to Urban Design, as well as teach upper-level studio design. The professor currently runs an interdisciplinary practice dedicated to high-level research and design on a variety of subjects regarding contemporary architecture and urbanism.
The foundation of this research project lies primarily in the development of a future-capable method for handling complex urban planning and design tasks. The basis for an interdisciplinary collection of instruments, methods and processes for the urban planning and design process was worked out in cooperation with the More