Architectural education in Switzerland: Waterloo Architecture student Sam Oswald documents a visit to the ETH Zurich. The view over Zurich from the ETH campus The hill is small, by Swiss standards. Still, as the bus reaches the top, the view over Lake Zurich and the surrounding Alpen foothills is impressive. Up here is the largest part of the campus of the ETH Zurich. The Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule is one of two technical universities in Switzerland,...
ABSTRACT by Andrea Murphy: There are over one thousand closed ‘small’ landfills in Ontario, each with differing circumstances and potential problems. This project proposes a method of addressing such dormant sites in situ, based upon a case study in Hamilton. Of the four closed landfills within Hamilton city limits, three of them lie in the low lands of the Red Hill Creek Valley. Perched at the source of the Red Hill Creek, the Upper Ottawa...
ABSTRACT by David Schellingerhoudt: Architecture is an act of agency, and a technology that can be learned by anyone for their own purpose. It evolved as a system of organization and a protective shell for our fragile bodies, a vast, complex technology that enables human survival. Yet despite its universal nature, we have artificially limited our control over it, and who has access to it; we limit its potentials, its adaptive capacities, its diversity, and...
ABSTRACT by Ningxin (Sophia) Zhu: China has become one of the world’s economic engines. One major driving force is its rapid urbanization. However such rapid development has resulted in issues such as resource and energy depletion, pollution and environmental deterioration. Recently the government has endorsed green buildings and has urged ministries to work out a national action plan. It is predicted that green building will be the next big thing in China. But before importing...
A descent into the ravine is to step through a tear in urbanity. The terrain vague is a foil to the capitalist city; against a demand for order, specificity, and integration, it is disorienting, banal, erratic. Operating outside the constraints of dominant social structures, it harbours the unconscious of the city, not only an inevitable, but also a necessary rupture in the urban fabric. In this subterranean realm, the striated and measured plots of land...
The human being may no longer be reduced to the bounds of organic matter. An organism – a life form constructed from interdependent components that maintain various vital processes – may now reach beyond the limits of biological materials. Beyond the skin, thumbs, eyes, and organs of the average human being, we may notice the mutually dependent system of parts, functioning simultaneously as autonomous and interconnected components. These organic systems are now capable of fusing...
The reality of cities is that, no matter how designed, controlled, or planned they are, people will do as they like. They will find ways to live and move through them that suit their purposes, even if this means going against a ‘designed’ system. In the case of South Africa during apartheid, this movement was obstructed by institutionalised segregation and State oppression. Apartheid, which means ‘apart’ and ‘hood’ in Afrikaans, was an attempt to inscribe...
On March 14, 2011 the Bloomberg Administration unveiled New York City’s 10-year comprehensive waterfront plan entitled, “Vision 2020.” Though the document follows a long line of waterfront revitalization proposals, it offers an extraordinarily profound and historically unprecedented ambition to re-establish New York as one of the world’s premiere waterfront cities by transforming its post-industrial harbour into a “Sixth Borough” capable of sustaining expanded urban development, recreation, local ecologies, and water-based economies. Underlying this extensive redevelopment...
Architectural designers often need to strike an uneasy balance between idealism and reality. Under most circumstances, architects are restricted by clients, budgets, and available technologies. However, divorced from traditional constraints, visionary concepts of new dwellings, new cities, and new “worlds” will spark greater forms of innovation and drive creativity for future generations. The exploration of new spatial boundaries and conceptual environments for design will irrevocably alter the human experience while adapting new challenging roles for...