Hey, Teacher

At one point every architect entertains the idea of founding one’s own school. Usually a very charming and optimistic idea, being outside the institution. However, only few did it—whether on a dusty parking lot in Downtown Los Angeles, or by moving back and forth between Wisconsin and Arizona. Turning a school into the School is a very powerful act of thinking of where one stands as an architect, and combines practicalities with more abstract things such as ideology, disciplinary critique, and pedagogy.

You will all be professors, if not deans. Your School is not in Zurich, but it is Zurich. Your students will not study at a three- to four-letter school. Of course you need an organizational structure. You need facilities, space, peers, desire, enemies, and a place. You need to realize what kind of teacher you imagine to be. There will be four city-wide professor conferences, where agenda and ambitions are shared.

We start easy: a photograph that captures you with your 17 students, just like Buckminster Fuller teaching in a meadow or Alvin Boyarsky on an elephant.

That is your first statement of intent. Then you design your School. From the freshman orientation to the building and place that represents your workplace. It should not be big, as the city is big enough. How is the school’s internal performance linked to its exterior expression? Does the contained have anything to do with its container? What is the one place in the city where all schools coalesce, if the „Audimax“ is not an option?

We will invert our conventional teaching experience. At one point during midway, you will eventually and literally become the teacher and we will be your students executing your given task. You will profess.

Lernziel:
Understanding the difference between being educated as an architect and learning to become an architect.

Capacity: max 18 professors to not overstretch the teacher-student ratio.
Project development is mainly done in pairs

Introduction: Tuesday, 18.09.2018, 10:00 am, Pavilion HIQ C11, ETH Hönggerberg
Studio: Pavilion HIQ C11, ETH Hönggerberg

+ Integrated Discipline Planning (P)