Chair of Affective Architectures Dept. of the Ongoing

The Price of History (pt.2)

(Un)listing Zurich (or elsewhere)

Kantine Binzmühle (not listed)
Luca Can
Offene Rennbahn Oerlikon (should be listed)
Luca Can
Noé Herrli
Hallenbad Oerlikon (parts of it should be listed)
Noé Herrli
Charlotte Bitter
Autonomes Jugendzentrum Zurich (AJZ) (should be brought back)
Charlotte Bitter
Sophia Trumpp
Helmhaus & Wasserkirche (can remain listed but needs to be adapted)
Sophia Trumpp
Kantonsspital Baden (not listed)
Schauspielhaus (listed)
Prime Tower (not listed)
Noelle Haffter
Magic X Sex Store Limmatquai (facade and use should be listed)
Noelle Haffter
Leonie Wagner
Junggezellenhaus (use should be listed)
Leonie Wagner

Dear students,

What do you choose: to preserve energy or history?

When you list buildings, you waste energy because they cannot be adapted to new energy standards. On the other hand, when you adapt buildings to new energy standards, you erase their history, because the material traces are transformed and their memories fade away.

Will the conservation of history become unaffordable with rising energy prices?

For the Master Thesis FS23, we reuse the topic The Cost of History, which we proposed for HS 2022. Not only materials but also ideas are worth being recycled.* We invite you to list or unlist buildings in Zurich or elsewhere.

You might find a building worth protecting, because you find its history or spatial qualities ** essential to keep. Or you might unlist a monument, because it mummifies the past and stands for exclusion and control and for values that you don’t share.***

You will reflect on the amount of energy embedded in the building of your choice. You will also reflect on the amount of history embedded in the building of your choice. And you’ll wonder: what does listing and monumentalizing do? What kind of identity or history does it serve? What should we conserve: the architecture or its meaning ****? What kind of value, possibly economic, does it create for the city or for private interests? How to think across the boundary between listing and unlisting, and come up with architectural scenarios that re-engage or re-imagine our built legacy *****, while considering its environmental impact?

Both listing and unlisting are about the future. Will the next generation agree with your choice or regret your blindness?

* Be welcome to visit our studio and archives!
** Usages can be very relevant too!
*** You might also (dis)agree with your colleagues who developed proposals before you and elaborate upon their work, or make a clear statement for the opposite case.
**** Its usage can be very relevant too!
***** Or you can simply bring scenarios to the table that look to continue the re-use of knowledge and research, reflect upon developed proposals and make a case more and more complex and relevant?

Works