Dept. of the Ongoing

Starting now! Studio reviews for "House as a Story / Story as a House" with guest crits @torzofrancesca @wimgoesarchitectuur @annehultzsch @edzardmik

HS 24 Master Thesis with @artinspaceandtime_ Outcasts Can institutional ‘outcasts’ become a driving force for a more equitable and inclusive development of cities rather than contributing to an ongoing practice of property speculation? We will be moving our diploma studio into ETH’s VOB building in Voltastrasse, one of its residential buildings soon up for sale. We will perform, dwell, build 1:1 and speculate in VOB, cast as no longer useful, as not enough in shape, as out of tune. What other future can we imagine, expanding our understanding of home, collectivity, ownership and public responsibility? Very much looking forward to this one, join us and apply! All info via link in bio. Image 1: Private Collection - Mette Edvardsen Image 2: VOB, Voltastrasse 24, Zurich

In the context of Parity Talks IX, we host the two 12 hour radio programmes on the Parity Group Fluid Archive website (link in bio) compiled by the Learning Palestine Collective. These radio programmes combine songs, poems, talks, chants and teach-ins that help us comprehend the history and realities of Palestine and what it means for the world today. Learning Palestine is a group of artists, academics, intellectuals and community members, who aim to disseminate knowledge on the history of the ongoing struggle for justice, liberation, and freedom of Palestine and the Palestinian People. They wish to practice new and old ways of disseminating this knowledge, that function out with the constrains of social media and corporate controlled networks.

This semester, we are teaching another iteration of the seminar Architectural Wor(l)ds in the Undercommons. Working from and within the social poesis of life in the Undercommons, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney elaborate an array of concepts as ‘words making worlds’: study, debt, surround, planning, shipped, fugitivity, undercommons. They point to the ongoingness and ever-presence of self-organised arrangements that operate outside institutional logics with an intentionality to survive, and find joy. Against a backdrop of dominant norms – embedded in culture, standards, objects, buildings – these undercommons are often excluded, overlooked or relegated to the ‘other’. Through a radical shift of perspective – where being included is no longer the goal, but refusing to take part and to act on own terms takes centre stage – Moten & Harney consider these undercommons as forms of intelligence and togetherness that serve as a blueprint for being together in this world otherwise. During this course we will ask: how to understand these undercommons in spatial terms? What kind of spatial intelligence do they hold or point at? Through case studies and encounters with spatial practices we make their spatial solutions, ‘beyond’ typologies or methods for space-making seen, and through this, we reflect on ourselves as spatial practitioners. Departing from Moten & Harney’s fugitive vocabulary we look at spaces otherwise: spaces creating worlds driven by a desire to live, dwell, survive and dream, anchored on multiple bodies, experiences and ontologies. Through this we engage with questions on authorship, togetherness, difference and the ‘other’ in spatial practice today. Some wonderful guests will join us on our walks and talks in the wild beyond: Orkun Kasap @ok.asap , Torsten Lange @torstenlange79 , Niloofar Rasooli, An Fonteyne, Emma KaufmannLaDuc @_emkatarina & Nils Grootenzerink @nils.nef

This upcoming 2024 spring semester, we are hosting the student-led elective course Unmasking Space for the second time. Check out the open call!💥

Geocentric Driftings #3 Iceland - Political Geologies @galaadvandaele Running through Iceland and stretching all across the ocean, there is a rift, a wide, deep crack, reaching all the way to the Earth’s mantle. Along this line, the European and American tectonic plates have been drifting away from each other for millions of years, and magma erupts over and over again, creating the very substance of the island. It is there, in between two cliffs that each belong to a continent, that the Icelandic Commonwealth held its outdoor parliament. For close to a millennium, starting in the year 930, it gathered around each summer solstice under a never-setting sun to discuss laws and settle disputes. This flatland framed by basalt walls – called Thingvellir, or “Plain of the Parliament” – is a geological landform, yet it was inhabited as a quasi-architecture and above all as a cultural, political, juridical, diplomatic space by the Vikings of this medieval proto-democracy. Taking this unparalleled geo-cultural space as a starting point, we will pace the surface and the depths of an island born of lava flows, observing some of the sites that manifest its turbulent geological life. The steam vents, the bubbling mud pools and the magmatic caves, the young volcanoes and the geysers. All those places where the geological shows itself, stages its dynamics and the ways in which it shapes the Earth, building a spectacle that never fails to attract crowds of fascinated tourists. We will visit some of the cultural and industrial practices that engage directly with the geological reality of the island, as well as some of the architectures that emerge around its geological presences. Starting with geothermal power stations and aluminum factories run by multinational conglomerates, we will go through museums or mines, and meet designers that turn glass wool back into obsidian or lava flows into facade modules. Finally, we will dive into geology as a political space, following the path sketched out by the Thingvellir, to investigate contemporary links between geology and environmental remediation, revealing global dynamics that affect both Iceland and our own European reality.

(Podcast) // S1E3 Available on Spotify! >> the Making Of… Our guests this episode! Ludwig Berger is a landscape sound artist and educator. In his compositions, installations and performances, he enables intimate and playful sonic encounters with plants, animals, buildings and geological entities. In his musical work, Berger produces sonic eco-fictions with processed and synthetic sounds. He studied electroacoustic composition at the University of Music Weimar and Musicology, Art History and Literature at the University of Eichstätt. As a sound researcher and teacher at the Institute for Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich from 2015-2022, Berger studied the sonic dimension of Japanese gardens, alpine glaciers and urban landscapes. He has composed sound and music for award-winning films and theatre pieces and curates the landscape sound festival "Sonic Topologies" in Zurich and the experimental music label Vertical Music. Michael Hoi Ming Du is one of the initiators of SEKUNDOS, a group of students from ETH D-arch who are working on a study of identities morphologies through the format of music and sounds. Their aim is to recognize pluralities and emphasize singularities. In recent years Michael has been interested in how social gatherings, sonic memories, and improvisational performances influence architecture and spatiality, and have made performances and installation works to explore these topics. Jingle: Michael Hoi Ming Du Graphics: Ann Kern #departmentoftheongoing #themakingof

(Podcast) // S1E3 Available on Spotify! >> the Making Of… In this episode, spatial practitioners Ludwig Berger, Michael Hoi Ming Du and Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk come together with a selection of soundings that bring to the fore stories about spaces and landscapes far and wide. How can soundings and the act of listening articulate space and architecture in ways that traditional modes of representation fail to capture. Indeed, to capture often goes without consent, but to listen requires presence, patience and togetherness. In this episode, we unfold and unmask political, social, cultural and ecological stories embedded in landscapes and spaces that have been told and continue to speak through soundings dear to us. We take the time to listen to these soundings and discuss how they might inform our understanding of spaces, our occupation of spaces, memories and futures of spaces. Graphics: Ann Kern #departmentoftheongoing #themakingof

Tomorrow during our seminar ‘Architectural Wor(l)ds within the Undercommons’, we will have a guest input tomorrow 20 April 2023 by He Shen. Join us at 13:15 in the DiD Lab, ONA Neunbrunnenstrasse 50, Oerlikon 8050. He Shen @he_shen / 何珅 is an architect, researcher and curator based in Zürich. As part of the collective Querformat @querformat__ , he produced the exhibition Cabin Crew ( gta exhibitions, ETH Zürich), Sexkino Roland @sexkinoroland (with Nexpo), which both investigate the intersection of gender and space through art and architecture; Within the performative cooking collective Kitchuan @kitchuan_zh , he has made various events and performance investigating shared memories and identities through food; He is also an active member of the Parity Group @paritygroup and is currently leading the project Fluid Archive. His latest research engages with the hidden interior of historical queer spaces in Zürich and its archival absence.

Marie-Louise Richards is an architect, lecturer, and researcher at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Her work explores invisibility as embodiment, a critical strategy, and a spatial category through methods of architectural and artistic practice, curatorial practice, and writing. Current work seeks to interrogate the Swedish Welfare State, colonial narratives, and the relationships of race and space. Reimagining the discipline, practice and history of architecture, through citational practices, queer, black feminist and decolonial methodologies, theories and approaches. She is part of the collaborative research project Spaces of Care, Disobedience and Desire: Tactics of Minority Space-Making with Natália Rebelo and Rado Ištok. Lecture at thu 6/4 at 2 pm at the Design in Dialogue Lab (ONA groundfloor) - we start at 1 pm with Huda Tayob (on zoom, we screen live). More info deptoftheongoing.org

Huda Tayob is a South African architectural historian and theorist. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Manchester, and has previously taught at the University of Cape Town, the University of Johannesburg and the Bartlett School of Architecture. Her research focuses on minor, migrant and subaltern architectures, architectural ghost stories and other archival silences. She is co-curator of the open access curriculum Racespacearchitecture.org, and co-curator of the digital exhibition, Archive of Forgetfulness. Lecture at thu April 6th at 1 pm or via zoom (dm for info) at the Design in Dialogue Lab (ONA ground floor).

Next week Thursday April 6th from 1 to 3:30 pm we hold a joyfull assembly in the wonderful presence of Huda Tayob and Marie-Louise Richards who will both give a public lecture. Everyone welcome at the Design in Dialogue Lab (ONA ground floor).