Modulverantwortung: Annika Seifert
Lehrteam: Annika Seifert, Axel Humpert, Urs Rieder (Expert), Anthony Frank (Assistant)

Re-Sourcing Icons

Existing architecture, whether as a whole or broken down into its component parts, represents a precious resource for our architectural practice. As a frame of reference, it has always inspired our design work and provides important orientation in our search for solutions to urban planning and architectural challenges. Against the backdrop of increasingly scarce resources and our growing awareness of the interrelationships between ecology and energy, the existing architectural fabric is gaining in importance as actual building material that can be reused.

In the fall semester, we will be considering three pavilion buildings that are significant in terms of design and architectural history and view them as a resource that is available to us in the form of component reuse in order to design a new project. The three original buildings – the Saffa Pavillon 58, the Centre le Corbusier in Zurich and the Bürgenstock Bazaar – are hypothetically brought to Horw, where they provide the material basis for a Student Community House on the future HSLU campus. The students take a pavilion as their point of departure, comprehensively analyse it and develop a new design based on the available resources and components. In the process, we deal with questions of a material and ideal kind:

What role does the issue of grey energy play in our design considerations? Can we successfully create new, coherent designs that are largely based on materials from an existing building? What opportunities and challenges does the history and previous architectural identity of the original building bring with it? To what extent does the original architectural constellation serve as a valuable support? Where do we take liberties with the new design?