Modulverantwortung: Prof. Dr. Oliver Dufner
Lehrteam: Prof. Dr. Oliver Dufner, Dr. Marcel Bächtiger, Dipl. Ing. MAS Caroline Ting
Assistant: Alice Busani, Architect USI AAM

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 history 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 account 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.

Opening event: Tuesday 21 Sept. 2021; 10:00am.-3:00pm
End of study: Tuesday 21 Dec. 2021
Submission: Tuesday 15 Jan. 2022
Final critique with guests: 24-25 Jan. 2022
In-depth study, A4 portrait, 3 bound copies, format: .indd and .pdf submitted to ILIAS