Department / Institute: Prof. Dr. Tom Avermaete
Doctoral Fellowship in History and Theory of Architecture (2 positions)
LUS Doctoral Crits HS24
History and Theory of Architecture VIII: Seen from the South
A new core theory course for master’s students taught for the third time in spring 2025 argues that the list of ‘great’ cities needs to be rethought. Given the diversity of urbanisms around the world, it would be a disservice to limit one’s perspective to theoretical notions originating More
Baukultur back to the future
Grundlagen: Vitrinen. A Zürich Lexicon
Urban Codes and Urban Forms: The Case of Zurich
LUS Doctoral Crits AS 2024 & Book Launch
Spielraum & Öffentlicher Raum (lecture) | Public Space: The Real and the Ideal (journal presentation)
Listening In: Conversations on Architectures, Cities and Landscapes, 1700-1900 – Programme and Abstracts
Codes and Conventions for Future Zurich: A Propositional Planning Approach to Qualitative Densification
This 4-year project uniquely combines historical and design-led research to explore urban strategies for housing the anticipated 25% population increase that Zurich is facing in the next 20 years. A ‘retroactive analysis’ of the historical evolution of building codes, as well as of the specific urban types and More
City of Codes
The city of Zurich is a testament to the incredible power of urban codes and their influence on urban form. From the mid-nineteenth onwards, these codes, such as building laws, norms, standards, or even municipal constitutions, shaped and reshaped the city into what it is today. The research More
Symposium ‘Drawing the Urban’
‘Baukultur und Recht’
Symposium of Urban Design History and Theory (SUDHT)
Design Studios as «Communities of Tacit Knowledge»
Much of what architecture students learn in the studio is «tacit knowledge.» They develop the skills and sensibilities of architectural and urban design with practice, often under the supervision of instructors and peers, not by studying textbooks. Yet, despite its importance, we know relatively little about how this More
La Norme d’Agadir – Un Urbanisme sur Mesure (Exhibition) & Agadir – Building the Modern Afropolis (Book Launch)
Writing Urban Landscapes of the Anthropocene
History and Theory of Architecture VIII: Seen from the South
Tacit Knowledge in Architecture
Unlocking the ‘Contact Zone’. Towards a New Historiography of Architecture
This research project seeks to develop a new method of writing the history of post-WWII architecture, reflecting the complexities of globalisation and its influence on the built environment. The project investigates an alternative historiographic approach by organising history around cross-cultural ‘contact zones’. This term was first used by More
Unlocking a Multidisciplinary Discourse on Architecture and the City
This research project sets out to develop a new methodology of crossing disciplinary perspectives with the goal of unlocking a multidisciplinary historiography of architecture. It is based on the conviction that something fundamentally new can be learned from the exchanges that architects have had with other disciplines.
Agadir. Building the Modern Afropolis
Writing Landscapes, Writing the Urban
Repository
www.avermaete.repository.ethz.ch is an open repository for the chair’s education, research, and publication activities. Next to the chair’s Instagram account, the website informs and inspires students and professionals using graphic material and represents each team member. The website also contains a virtual exhibition space on, for example, the student More
The City in Theory – Her Agency
This seminar follows the work and life of a series of «female professionals» (architects, politicians, urban designers, journalists, editors, curators, philanthropists, etc.) in the post-war era who started to critically engage in discussions on urban design and actively contribute to the design of cities. By fully acknowledging the contributions More
Modern Architect and Migrant in the Australian Tropics
Despite a European training and an early career working with Peter Behrens, a migration from Vienna to the Australian state of Queensland positioned the architect Karl Langer (1903-1969) at the very edge of both European and Australian modernism. Confronted by tropical heat and glare, the economics of affordable More
Works and Ideas in Danish Modern Architecture
Kay Fisker (1893-1965) is considered one of the most influential Danish architects of the twentieth century, and yet there has existed until now no in-depth English-language study of his works and writing. Fisker’s output is closely associated with the functional tradition, a hybridization of international modernism and regional architectural More
The Modern Architect as Public Intellectual
Architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers (1909-1969) was a towering figure in 20th-century Italian architecture, with a significant impact at the international level. Through the work of his collaborative firm (Banfi Belgiojoso Peressutti Rogers, or BBPR), the editorship of publications such as Domus and Casabella, and his teaching at the More
Theme Issue ‘Modernities’, OASE 109. Journal for Architecture
Tête-à-Tête Lectures: Material Commons
The City in Theory: Her Agency
Call for Lost Entries: Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition ARCHIVE
Urban Design in the 20th Century: A History
Conceptualising ‘Cultural Landscape Commons’: Retracing Ecological Thinking from the Swiss Alpine Landscape to Social-Ecological Systems
This paper retraces the fundaments of the ‘nature-culture’ divide within the study of Swiss alpine ‘cultural landscape commons’, showing how this notion was shaped by early ecological thinking expressed through environmental determinism, dynamic systems, and cultural ecology. These fields of research are seen as precursors to some of the More
Irrigation Commons: What Lessons for Sustainable Risk Mitigation?
Swiss agricultural commons have overseen the management of pastures, forests, and water in the Alps for centuries. In Canton Valais, the historic irrigation systems have shaped the cultural landscape of the region as a whole. The resilience of these channels rests in part on their ability to mitigate More
Call for Lost Entries: The Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 1965-2020
Collective Grounds: Housing Estates and the European City, 1865–1930
The current postdoctoral research project focuses on the relation between cities and urban housing estates, understood as ensembles of two or more, medium-density to high-density, primarily residential buildings, conceived at the same time and with a level of common administration. The earliest housing estates were conceived as islands More
Architectural Expertise in a World-in-Common
Architectural and urban design are activities embedded in a socio-spatial and political context. Harvard Professor of Urban Planning Susan Fainstein, therefore, challenges theories of planning—and, with that, architectural and urban design—to address these relations: how does the intervention and implementation impact the (urban) context, the (city) users, and More
The Travelling Architect’s Eye: Photography and Automobile Vision
This research project aims to investigate the status of the photographs that architects take during their travels by car. It is based on the hypothesis that the view from the car has established a new epistemology of the urban landscape and the territory at large. Focusing on the More
Building the Commons. An Alternative Architectural History of the European City
Alternative principles of pooling common resources are attracting increased attention in political circles and society at large. Labelled as “commons”, some of these issues have, in the last decades, received growing academic attention in critical urban studies, urban geography, and the social sciences. Indeed, the examination of the More
An Architecture World: The Tacit in Recent Architectural Pedagogy at ETH Zurich
The tacit dimension of architectural pedagogy—which students deploy when designing, but have trouble explaining—remains understudied, beset by methodological difficulties. Existing accounts emphasize isolated studio exercises or cognitive processes, often neglecting cultural, historical, and disciplinary contexts. Meanwhile, the notion of tacit knowledge is not even entirely adequate for architectural More
Exploring Urban-Scale Models: The Projets Urbains and the Performance of the Maquette, 1960s till Today
Little research exists on urban-scale models. In existing scholarship, they are often lumped together with architectural models. Although urban-scale models certainly possess characteristics that are similar to those of architectural models, they also differ. The key difference, this research project hypothesizes, is that in urban-scale models the performative More
Histories of Urban Design: Global Trajectories and Local Realities
Baukultur und die Stadt
The «Contact Zone» of Agadir’s 1960 Emergency Aid Programme
The reconstruction of the Moroccan city of Agadir in the immediate aftermath of the devastating 1960 earthquake is an exemplary yet much overlooked cross-cultural «contact zone» between local and international rescuers, experts, citizens, organizations, and governments. Studying why the development aid Morocco received was not unconditionally accepted, but More
TACK Talks: How to? A Guide Through Knowing
Writing Model Histories
12 May, 10:00–13:00 | Colloquium | online. Invited Lecturers: Professor Dr. Thea Brejzek, School of Archi- tecture, University of Technology, Sydney; Professor Dr. Mari Lending, Oslo School of Architecture and Design; Dr. Matthew Wells, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zurich.
Writing Automobile Histories
Colloquium: 5 March, 15:00–18:00 | online. Workshop: 5 March, 18:30–20:30 | online. The colloquium aims to untie the specificity of car travel as a new episteme, addressing issues related to the emergence of the new perceptual regimes that emerged thanks to the automobile.