Modulverantwortung: Prof. Dr. Oliver Dufner
Lehrteam: Prof. Dr. Oliver Dufner, Dr. Marcel Bächtiger, Dipl. Ing. MAS Caroline Ting
Assistierende Arch. Alice Busani

Dutch structuralism – the human being at the center of house and city

In the autumn semester of 2021, we will focus on the situation around 1968 in Switzerland and thus devote ourselves to a paradigm shift that reveals remarkable parallels to today‘s situation. This applies both to the topics that determined the architectural discourse around 1968 – for example, participatory processes, alternative forms of housing and ecological (today: climate-friendly) building – as well as to a fundamental shift in interest and a changed concept of architecture. Then as now, social, political and ecological questions outranked the aesthetic categories of space, form or volume; architecture’s social function and responsibility was more relevant than the sensory experience it could afford. However, an architecture his-tory view of the years around 1968 cannot be restricted to the experimental houses, housing forms and imaginary cities of the counterculture. It must also take into ac-count the structuralist and brutalist approaches, new concepts of form and material as well as the mass housing construction of the economic boom years. With their interest in ‘pop’, the years around 1968 also mark, not least, the beginning of the epoch that has gone down in architectural history books as postmodernism.

 Form 

The module serves to teach scientific working methods and concentrated thinking and writing. It offers the opportunity to reflect in writing on one‘s own actions as a designing architect. The aim is to write an independent in-depth thesis relevant to the topic.