Urban Myths

Urban Myths

Three Sequoias

How three mature sequoia trunks, one measuring 1.1m in diameter, became available in Zurich is somewhat vague; accident, sickness, potential danger of falling, overcrowding? How a copse of sequoia, native to western regions of North America, has grown for over a century in the centre of the city is even more mysterious. Urban myth reports that Queen Victoria gifted some sequoia seeds to Zürich’s high society. What we do know is that one of our trees was one hundred and nineteen years old, giving us some very precious material with which we have the opportunity to make something useful and special. It’s a coincidence that allows a new structure to create new space.

We will start this semester by making a gathering place in the garden, which also collects rainwater and redistributes it throughout the garden. Alongside abundant planting, past generations of students have built a tent, a fountain, a land drain and collection pool. The new intervention will connect these structures and establish a new landmark in the landscape. The structure will also be constrained by the weight of water, the energy infrastructure below ground and consent from Grünstadt Zürich (which is being negotiated as I speak). The making will be constrained to the three sequoia trees and our collective skill and imagination. In all other respects we are completely free.

The Production of Space

After the first three weeks in the garden, we shall investigate how space is produced in the wider territory; by whom and for whom. What coincidences of material resources with technical and political tools produce the spaces we inhabit? If Switzerland is to accommodate one million additional more people by 2050 as is predicted, it will challenge the very foundation of the production of space. But if we maintain the status quo, we will fail as a society to fulfill our obligations towards society and environment. And as additional space cannot be created, it is perhaps more important that we investigate how space is maintained and transformed.

Long before land became property that could be nominated public or private, spaces were defined by actions. They were governed by the Church, Crown or lords overlaid by commons allowing all members of society access to natural resources for foraging, fuel and water. And while Switzerland has maintained some of the most advanced commons among developed industrial societies, the territory remains defined by a complex network of ownership and regulation that determines how architecture and landscape are made.

Walk your Walk

The shift in focus from the garden to the wider territory will remain emphatically hands on. If maps, laws, policies will inform our design, it will be led by direct encounter with space and stuff. Your site will be a walk across Zurich from forest to forest, slicing the city in parallel lines, like sawing a tree into boards. You will document the spatial, constructed and natural conditions traversed; its ground, topography, boundaries, settlements and thresholds in ascending scales until a singular space is identified which reveals both visible and invisible constructs that govern the city. Some will confirm the idyl of a town nestled in the valley between forests while others will pass over the topographic saddle into Zurich north. Some walks pass through the lake. According to another urban myth, you are allowed to swim across the lake despite ferries and sailing boats, although this is not recommended as part of the studio – but documenting life by, on and in the water is. From Bürkli to Neuenschwander, the lake is a highly designed artefact.

You will make visible the processes which over time have fallen out of sight in drawings, photographs, text and films. You will collect artefacts or make an herbarium. You should know and test your rights. When does dérive become a trespass? Negotiating permission to work is a central process of design.

Our questions are not constrained by humans only. Property boundaries, protected and represented by a privileged few, make no sense to animals flying over or crawling within. Wind and storms care even less. Yet historic landscape painting maintains the urban (and nature) myths that we are in control and will maintain male ancestral succession, with feminine embellishment, for eternity. We will ask you to document your walks with a companion from the histories of architecture, landscape and art who has challenged the system, who has added points of view beyond those established by law and cultural norms. Christine de Pisan’s Cité des Dames, Alison Smithson’s landscapes travels in a Déesse, Ingrid Pollard’s countryside roaming, Joan Didion’s transgression of LA, Chantal Akerman’s deadly kitchen routines, Mary Miss’ landscape cameras, Hannie and Aldo Van Eyks’ structuralist eye for play or Lina Bo Bardi’s bricoleur mind set.

Intervention

You will then make an intervention, at full scale, on site or displaced, permanent or ephemeral, to restore or repair but above all to transform the space in material form for a new civic function which may provoke a new way of seeing. Look at a gate, a fence, a forest, a lawn or a yard, a party wall or weeds growing between paving slabs. Observe how games are played - formalised in a pitch or adapted to suit the ground. How do we walk, stop, rest and gather? These can be the beginnings of architecture.

Look at the view. How is it structured? It may be beautiful for some, but it will be work to others. What may at first sight may seem both ancient and natural is almost certainly recent and cultural. Our cities and landscapes are no longer natural even though they contain natural systems. They have been shaped by a demanding human culture that now not only protects its assets, it determines our perception. Walking across Zurich, think 2050, think 2500. Who will live here? Where will water flow?

The studio will be outside more than it is inside, climate and seasons holding us all to account. The first three weeks of collective building will be very intense, with some longer working hours than usual, but these may be warm and sunny. As the semester progresses, the days will get shorter, wetter, colder, the foundational conditions for architecture.