Department / Institute: Prof. Freek Persyn
Critical Walking: A Methods Seminar
19 February – 7 May 2026 | ETH Zürich. This doctoral seminar has a twofold aim: (1) to develop an in-depth understanding of walking practices and critical walking methodologies across diverse contexts and geographies through theory sessions; and (2) to practise critical walking in walking seminars as a More
NSL Veranstaltungsplakat Frühjahrssemester 2026
Working on Transformation – An International Forum on Urban Planning as Learning
Working on Transformation
During the last year, members of the Chair of Architecture and Urban Transformation (also known as NEWROPE) have documented and systematised the chair’s teaching experiments – to set examples and to invite others to explore and perform “Working on Transformation” themselves. The examples revolve around pedagogical experiments, with More
Working on Transformation
LUS Lecture Series
Reframing the Winterslag Terril
Philippe Vandenbroeck’s research focuses on the intersection of imagination, urban transformation, and contested landscapes, centered on an exploratory case study of a historical mining site in Belgian Limburg. The case study examines the former Winterslag mine near Genk, a region profoundly reshaped by 20th-century coal mining and its More
To Open Up a Box and Find a Whole New World
The PhD thesis To open up a box and find a whole new world: action research on the relationship between production and place in Kuklen, Bulgaria explores the spatial dynamics of global manufacturing and the increasingly intricate relationship between production and place. It centres on the Trakia Economic More
LUS Doctoral Seminar: More-Than Methodologies: Explorations in Landscape and Urban Research
Urban Spaces for More-than-human Communities: Collaborative Processes, Design Attitudes and Hybrid Practices
The presence of biodiversity in cities is associated with multiple benefits, from climate adaptation to social well-being. These aspects have been widely studied, but in public space design biodiversity is often treated in purely quantitative terms: how much green surface, how many trees, how many different species. This More
Prof. Freek Persyn | NEWROPE Chair of Architecture and Urban Transformation
NSL Veranstaltungsplakat Herbstsemester 2025
LUS Doctoral Crits Autumn 2025
Engaging with Naturecultural Places: Action-Research in Five Sites Across Europe
How can urban areas shaped by both humans and non-humans be investigated and connected? This doctoral project explores naturecultural places in five European cities through first-person action research, engaging directly in their daily life. The aim of this approach is to understand how this model of urban transformation More
A Century of Urban Futures: Archives, Vectors, and Perspectives (1950-2050)
Wiederbelebung marginaler Räume: Eine Praxis der imaginativen Aktivierung
Abraumhalden sind ein charakteristisches Landschaftselement ehemaliger Kohlebergbaugebiete. In Flandern und im französischen Norden werden sie Terrils genannt. Lange Zeit galten sie als Randzonen, wurden häufig abgetragen und als Erholungsflächen umgenutzt oder in Grün-Blau-Netzwerke integriert. In Einzelfällen bleiben sie als Zeugnisse des industriellen Erbes erhalten.
Symposium – Stories from Naturecultural Places
LUS Doctoral Crits Spring 2025
Review of DELUS Journal for Landscape and Urban Studies: Chasing Water
The Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies is young and evolving. While it builds on a rich research history across various chairs, its identity still continues to take shape through its doctoral community, lecture series, and biannual research colloquia. In this context, it is particularly noteworthy that the More
LUS Doctoral Crits HS24
New Ruralities (NERU)
New Ruralities (NERU) is an Erasmus+ Cooperation partnerships programme, which brings together six design units within the universities of ULB (Brussels), POLITO (Torino), UDC (La Coruña), UMinho (Braga), UACEG (Sofia) and ETH (Zürich). The Newrope chair is participating on behalf of ETH. The partnership’s aim is to generate More
Behind Closed Doors
Spaces of global production are formed by a diverse set of spatial figures that result from and support a global division of labor. Spaces of global production include multinational manufacturing networks, industrial agglomerations, plantations, logistics corridors, and special economic zones.
DELUS Issue 1
Creating a Situated and Multilayered Understanding of Global Production Space Through Collective Interventions
Rooted in the tension between concrete locations and global networks, between movement and stillness, space and place, and between clusters and dispersed zones, global production landscapes are challenging to understand. Where do these production spaces originate? Who owns, designs, and manages them? Due to the opaque nature of More
LUS Doctoral Crits AS 2024 & Book Launch
DELUS Issue 0
The pilot issue of DELUS was launched at ONA DiD Lab in the autumn of 2023. It offers a range of diverse insights into landscape and urban questions. It introduces new methods to unpack multiple worlds and narrate manifold stories. The contributions range from unravelling histories of land-body More
LUS Doctoral Crits
COLLECTIVE WORKSHOP Transformational Encounters in the Trakia Economic Zone
This article is a reflection on an action research project with stakeholders of a special economic zone in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The article describes the process of engagement from the perspective of the workers and the managers of three international factories, with the aim to discover moments and entry More
More Than Human Cinema
LUS Talks 2023
Lively Cities
Researching Otherwise: Pluriversal Methods for Landscape and Urban Research
More Than Human Cinema: The Two Sights
Writing Urban Landscapes of the Anthropocene
Doctoral Crits of the Institute of Urban and Landscape Studies LUS
Sudamérica LUS Talks
20 October 2022, 18:30 (2 December: 17:30) | ETH Zürich, Neunbrunnenstrasse 50, ONA Fokushalle (E7), Zürich. This year, the LUS Talks will engage diverse perspectives from practitioners and theorists addressing South America’s complex social and ecological landscapes.
Film, Architecture, and Urban Studies
NSL Veranstaltungsplakat Herbstsemester 2022
ARCH+ 249: Learning Spaces
Writing Landscapes, Writing the Urban
Calculate or co-create?
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder – yet how do we find consensus on a shared amenity such as a neighbourhood? We took a stroll with two ETH architects to discover how they see their role as mediators between the conflicting priorities of urban consolidation, More
Rhythmic Transformations: the L200 Hybrid Space in Zurich
A centrally located hybrid community space in Zurich, at Langstrasse 200, by the name L200, is being shaped since 2018 through a co-creation process, a series of self-organization experiments with an action-oriented participatory design process. By bridging a multitude of social worlds in a small lively place, L200 More
Research Methods in Landscape and Urban Studies: Towards Sensory, Creative, and Imaginative Methodologies
More than Human. Cinema
We Need to Talk About Infrastructure
MOCK-UP
NSL Veranstaltungsplakat Herbstsemester 2021
51N4E, Denkstatt, Endeavour, Design in Dialogue
The second volume in the ‘Chapters’ series from Brussels-based architecture firm 51N4E focuses on how design processes can be shaped through dialogue. First, it investigates their work together with two design-focused consulting firms, endeavour (Antwerp) and Denkstatt (Basel), wherein all three explore the boundaries of architecture, advocating openness More