Teaching Architecture

© 2011 EPFL

As part of the Architecture and the City Festival in San Francisco, swissnex hosts the exhibition Teaching Architecture: 3 Positions Made in Switzerland, which expresses three points of view on urban architecture as envisioned by three leading teams of young architects at the three main Swiss architecture schools.

“Hong Kong in Zurich: A Typological Transfer,” from Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), asks what Hong Kong’s iconic skyscrapers and urban apartment blocks would look like in the Swiss city—and how the architecture would need to change to fit in.

A project titled “19 Important Buildings” led by Raphael Zuber at the Accademia di Architettura Mendrisio, explores what makes the qualities of a "good" building, using examples from around the world. And from Ulrich Kirchhoff at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), “Radical Mix in Hanoi” looks at vertical urbanism and the architecture of communication.

Teaching Architecture was presented by the Istituto Svizzero di Roma at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale. A series of three dedicated catalogs (Hong Kong Typology, Important Buildings, and Radical Mix), designed by Ludovic Balland, accompanies the exhibition.