Research Project
Communities of Practice: Swiss Architecture as Shared Knowledge

By the end of the twentieth century, Swiss architecture acquired an international renown on the basis of highly crafted, formally reductive artefacts. These buildings have claimed an ethical basis by reflecting the strong character of host regional cultures that vary from canton to canton and city to city. Indeed, despite its international currency, the much-vaunted notion of Swiss architecture is a fully heterogeneous construct comprising highly distinct forms of practice, rooted in a common cultural and professional background. The launch of the revised and expanded second 2018 edition of Forms of Practice: German-Swiss Architecture 1980–2000 has served as an occasion to reposition the “forms of practice” of 1990s Swiss architecture in the context of the emerging “communities of practice” operating across Europe today. In the light of more recent developments in Switzerland and abroad, we invite the candid reassessment of Swiss architecture as a shared body of professional knowledge operating across generations and cultural borders.

Invited guests
Zurich session, 21 November 2018: Tom Avermaete, Maria Conen, Job Floris, Jeannette Kuo, Oliver Lütjens, Daniel Rosbottom

Contact

PD Dr. Irina Davidovici