Vernissage 03.10.2019 

03.10.2019 – 16.10.2019

ETH

Rämistrasse 101

Zurich

The bilateral research project ‘Cooperative Production of Low-Cost Housing – Socio-Technological Innovation for the Provision of Housing for Low-Income Populations’ investigates previous and current practices of affordable housing production in order to detect the transformative potential of urban development based on community organizations and the formation of housing cooperatives. Following the objective to establish viable models for cooperative housing production in the future, the collaboration between researchers in Switzerland and Brazil identifies key players, institutional protocols and technological frameworks necessary to foster innovative approaches within the low-income housing sector. Against the backdrop of the world’s largest social housing program ‘Minha Casa, Minha Vida’ (MCMV) and the development of cooperative housing in Switzerland, Germany, Japan, and Ethiopia, the research is tracing connections across historical and regional contexts. Analyzing the political, social and economic conditions, the research aims at identifying both innovations within housing production, as well as improvements in architectural and urban design quality linked to cooperative models. While case studies from the different regional contexts—ranging from developing to emerging and developed countries—serve for the analysis of various constellations between institutional and private stakeholders, particular attention is paid to housing provision that is co-produced and/or co-managed by communities and self-organizing entities. Accordingly, the project investigates the influence of (national and transnational) institutional frameworks on local building practice and therefore engages in an interdisciplinary, as well as transdisciplinary, dialogue assembling knowledge from the fields of architecture, urban planning, sociology, and political economy. By drawing on the experience of selected case studies, the research’s goal is to identify organizational models that would promote innovation for context-specific cooperative housing production, as well as for its transfer and scaling across regional boundaries.

Contact:

Sascha Delz
delz@arch.ethz.ch

Rainer Hehl
hehl@arch.ethz.ch

Norms and standards determine our living space. The spaces in which we work, shop, move and enjoy ourselves are based on them. They help define the organisational spatial principles that should contribute to offering optimised conditions for each specific spatial use. Spaces generated on a foundation of norms and standards are part of an abstract logic and consequently regularly draw upon themselves. They are not conceived to interact with one another. It is the changing relationship between different types of spaces, up to now applied as requirements, that allows cities to emerge.

In reality, norms and standards appear as catalysts of a current development in action, generated by a dynamic, that the agglomeration positions itself as an autonomous third element between the city centre and the landscape. Based on the overlap of different kinds of norms and standardised systems and their spatial elements, this settlement form frees itself from conventional traditional urban development. In addition, this calls into question the Leseartenof the city known up to now.

No overriding principles or regulated structures apply to this new kind of normal city. It is the sum of a multiplicity of complex systems with their respective organisational standards, a conglomerate of singularities. Because its components are in a continuous state of change, it is thought that it will never end. It is flexible and effortlessly absorbs new kinds of elements.

The various factors that lead to the development of this settlement form should be investigated as part of this research project, considering its social, political and historical connection in detail and naming its characteristics. The findings of this investigation make possible conclusions on the principles of the normal cityand demonstrate its potential.

Contact:

Marcin Ganczarski

ganczarski@arch.ethz.ch

Focussing on the metropolitan region of Cairo, this research project aims to identify the forces at work – both formal and informal, and combinations thereof – in the production of territory. Over the past decades, Greater Cairo has morphed into an indistinct zone structured by moments of concentration and corridors of movement whose flows bypass the center. One encounters here a process of territorial hybridization that has begun to engulf large parts of the Nile Valley – a form capital-driven spatial accumulation extending over large portions of the territory, one made of a conglomerate of informal settlements, desert cities, villages, industrial facilities, agricultural fields, infrastructure, and so on.

Working in collaboration with Egyptian partners, a first phase of the project addressed Cairo’s so-called informal settlements or ashwa’iyat, literally meaning disordered, haphazard, or random, and home to 10 million people reportedly living in those marginalized areas of the city by the turn of the millennium. Construction in these ‘informal’ settlements is of a very different order than in other parts of the world due to its organizational order, structural quality, material homogeneity, and normed building processes – an advanced form of informality that has recently given rise to what could be termed ‘informal speculation’, with more and more buildings being erected under the radar of official control. A second phase of the research directed its attention on so-called desert cities, understood within official planning policies as the ‘formal solution’ to address the needs of the growing population – removed from the city center and built on the outskirts of the capital on on virgin ground, so to speak, were a new and improved Egypt could be built from scratch – uncrowded, organized, and modern. The most recent of these endeavors to date is the project of the New Capital, a desert city reserved for the affluent class on the extended periphery of Cairo’s metropolitan periphery.

Contact:

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes

malterre@arch.ethz.ch

Patricia Ventura

M.Sc. Architektur

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

seit 2016 – Assistenz am Lehrstuhl Prof.Dr. Marc Angelil, ETH Zürich; Doktorandin am Lehrstuhl Prof. Donatella Fioretti, TU Berlin; seit 2015 – Freischaffende Architektin; 2012 – 2015 – Mitarbeit verschiedene Architekturbüros in Berlin, .Sc. Architektur, Technische Universität Berlin, Studienschwerpunkt: Informelle Siedlungsstrukturen in Brasilien; 2009 – 2012 – MBachelor Architektur, Technische Universität Berlin; 2006 – 2009 – Studienschwerpunkt: Architektonische Integration des Indianerstamms der Kiriris, Indianerreservat Mirandela Brasilien; 2004 – 2006 – Philosophie Vordiplom, Humboldt Universität Berlin; 1982 – Geboren in Recife Brasilien

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The game plan was as follows: five colleagues from the Department of Architecture of ETH Zurich, whose positions could not be further apart, accepted the challenge of the Swiss National Research Programme “New Urban Quality” (NRP 65) to investigate measures for improving the contemporary urban condition. Whereas a number of professors led the project (Günther Vogt, Christian Schmid, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Kees Christiaanse, and Marc Angélil), a next generation of researchers was furthered, namely, young practitioners and academics in disciplines addressing the built environment: landscape architecture, urban history, sociology, urban design, and architecture. Differences notwithstanding, all parties agreed to aim for a consensus – themes were debated, design proposal identified, theoretical propositions outlined, rejected, and rediscussed till an agreement could be found.

Insofar as the research aimed to offer practical measures for improving current urbanization processes, case studies within the metropolitan region of Zurich were identified. These cases foregrounded fundamentally different prototypical urban morphologies, which were to be compared with one another, highlighting different forms of urbanization: 1) an inner-city neighbourhood in a process of transformation, 2) a suburban region marked by infrastructure interventions, and 3) a recently developed agglomeration at the edge of the metropolitan region of Zurich.

Marcin Ganczarski

MPhil. Arch, Dipl.-Ing Arch AA TU

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Nach dem Studium der Architektur und des Städtebaus an den Technischen Universitäten Darmstadt DE und Delft NL graduierte Marcin Ganczarski 2007 als Diplom-Ingenieur Architektur von der TU Darmstadt DE. Er war in verschiedenen international tätigen Planungsbüros wie OMA – Rotterdam NL, AGPS Architecture – Zürich und E2A Architekten – Zürich  angestellt. 2012 nahm Marcin Ganczarski an der Architectural Association (AA) in London GB sein Nachdiplomstudium in Urban Design auf und erwarb 2014 den Master of Philosophy in Architecture and Urban Design. Seit 2014 ist er zudem als Assistent am Lehrstuhl von Prof. Marc Angélil für Architektur und Städtbau an der ETH Zürich tätig.

ganczarski@arch.ethz.ch

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes

Architect DPLG / MAS ETH Urban Design

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes is an architect and urban designer. She is involved in research and teaching at the chair of Prof. Dr. Marc Angélil since 2011, and completed in 2018 at ETH a doctoral degree on Food Territories, with Egypt as case study. She directed the cycle of the MAS in Urban Design on Egypt (2014-2016) , investigating formal and informal urban dynamics of Cairo, and currently directs the MAS Urban Design on Inclusive Urbanism (Tangier/Beirut/Marseille).

Charlotte studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture in Marseille and at the Technische Universität in Vienna. While doing her internship with the firm Coop Himmelb(l)au in Vienna, she was part of the European Central Bank Competition team. Her diploma ‘a Women Social Centre in Baghdad’, obtained in 2003 magna cum laude, tackled political and social involvements of architecture. A graduated architect, she collaborated with several offices (Rudy Ricciotti, Dipol Landscape Architects, OOS). In India, Charlotte worked with Balkrishna Doshi at Sangath. She obtained in 2008 a Master of Advanced Studies in Urban Design at the ETH.

Apart from her architectural practice, Charlotte co-funded with Noboru Kawagishi OMNIBUS, an urban design laboratory focused on trans-disciplinary metropolitan explorations (since 2009). She has lectured and taught workshops at the Architectural Foundation in London, the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, the University of Ss. Cyrill and Methodius in Skopje, the University of Seville, Hong-Kong University, ZhdK, FCL Singapore, and with the AA Visiting School in Alexandria, Egypt.
She was jury member of the Vlora Waterfront Competition (Albania), along with Stefano Boeri, Johan Anrys and Andreas Ruby.

She is co-editor of Cairo Desert Cities, Housing Cairo-The Informal Response (DAM Best Architecture Book 2016) and The Book, The School, The Town (2017, 2016, 2013, Berlin, Ruby Press), and published numerous articles in various magazines (AD, San Rocco, TRANS, MAS Context, Tracés, Horizonte, etc.). Works of the MAS which she curated have been exhibited at the Rabat Agora Biennale (Morocco), at the Bi-City Biennale in Shenzhen (PRC), at the Egyptian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale (It) and at the constellation.s exhibition at arc-en-rêve, Bordeaux (F).

Charlotte is also staff delegate at the Department and a member of the Parity Group (parity@arch.ethz.ch).

malterre@arch.ethz.ch

http://omnibus-lab.com/

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]