ETH Zürich

Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design
Prof. Dr. Alexander Lehnerer
Department of Architecture
HIL G 74
Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5
8093 Zurich, Switzerland

The City as the Critical Project of Architecture

Ever since architecture discovered the city as its domain, there has been a critical and fruitful debate regarding how these two relate to one another. One is clearly always part of the other, is comprised by the other, sometimes contained in the other. At least the city and architecture always condition one another. The city is the one big project of society and therefore naturally challenges architecture as a cultural project. The productive and intellectual impetus of the inconclusive negotiation between the two lies exactly in the confrontation of the individual with the collective, text with context, the political with the planned, and the autonomous with the cultural. These dialectical moments of inquiry outline what the discipline of architecture has described as a third typology, an architectural project that operates between two seemingly contradictory states creating friction that leads to alternative and subversive outcomes.

This search for a third typology has led us to investigate collective form and its physicality as a result of historical and contemporary processes, as well as projective/speculative conception—at a scale larger than a building and smaller than a city. The methodological analysis of collective form includes comparative observations, critical commentary, and the search for strategic tools that can be employed to simultaneously shape and understand our built environment in order to produce specific public qualities as cumulative effects. The results are thematic formats that can be read as critical discursive urban projects, both as research and pedagogy, but never obliged to only one single scale.

In this third typology, between the big and the small, theory and project, sign and object, the speculative reality of architecture develops its truly striking potential.

The individual research projects are conducted within three disciplinary modes of inquiry: the history of architecture, the mediums in which architecture communicates, and architecture’s disciplinary versus cultural concerns. Within this research framework, the chair searches for examples, narratives, rationales, and manifestos of how architecture is both a product of as well as an influential force behind the form and culture of the world’s infinite anthropogenic fabric.

17 Volcanoes—Figures in the Landscape of Java

April 20, 2016

Between 1836 and 1848, the German explorer Franz Junghuhn made several expeditions on Java in the service of the Dutch colonial authorities. He was among the first to climb the island’s many volcanoes. His scientific works, books, maps, and lithographs made him the “Humboldt of Java.”

We follow Junghuhn’s footsteps and explore 17 of his favorite Javanese volcanoes.

As giant figures in the landscape, these volcanoes are deeply rooted in the cultural life of Java. They created the land and continuously transform it. Their potential destructiveness is overwhelming. Yet, they shape the land and feed the people by producing fertile grounds for one of the world’s most densely populated islands. Volcanoes cannot be considered landscape. They are objects with distinct qualities—personalities—and are even able to talk. They remain silent for a while, and suddenly start to speak again. By visiting Junghuhn’s favorite volcanoes, we converse with each of them as well. The closer we get to them, the clearer we perceive their singularity. They help us to define the island of Java not by its exterior coastline, but from within.

The 17 volcanoes form territorial markers that allow us to interweave historical and contemporary narratives of Indonesia. As politically, economically and culturally charged objects that act and behave in periodic cycles, these volcanoes are neither urban nor rural, alive nor dead, past nor present, good nor bad. Their ambiguous existence makes them particularly interesting for an architectural scrutiny.

This exhibition marks the start of a three-year collaborative research project between the Professorship of Art and Architectural History of Philip Ursprung, the Assistant Professorship of Architecture and Urban Design of Alex Lehnerer, and a group of external partners. It is part of the Future Cities Laboratory and funded by the National Research Foundation of Singapore.

The show presents some of Junghuhn’s scientific and artistic works in conjunction with works of art by Bas Princen, Armin Linke and U5 (Martin Kunz, Stefanie Rubner, Berit Seidel). All of them join us on our expeditions to Java, together with experts such as the volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer as well as many doctoral students, students, and assistants of this school.

Alex Lehnerer and Philip Ursprung

ETH Zürich

The City as the Critical Project of Architecture

Events

17 Volcanoes—Figures in the Landscape of Java