Sustainable Design - A Dialog Between Theory and Practice

Sustainable Design – A Workshop Series

What are the relevant agencies of sustainable design today? This workshop series addressed the complex relationship between theory and practice in the field of sustainable design. Architects are increasingly forced to develop a new attitude toward their practice, questioning the carbon legacy of 20th century modernity. Although “practice” is commonly conceived as the counterpart of “theory,” the notion of a new “theory of practice” exceeds the dichotomy and promotes a specific approach to sustainability in architecture today. First and foremost, sustainable design depends on an awareness for the dialectics between theory and practice: Architects need to inform their ideas on sustainable design through a profound cognition of the construction sector and vice versa.

The workshop series was centered around two main questions: (1) HOW TO OVERCOME THE LEGACY OF CARBON MODERNITY? and (2) HOW TO BUILD IN THE ERA OF THE GLOBAL CLIMATE CRISIS?. Much of what is modern in the city is a “by-product of oil” (Michael Watts). By highlighting the perspectives of different actors (such as architects, anthropologists, and artists), a transdisciplinary understanding of sustainable design and sustainability in general was promoted.

The collective character of sustainable design shaped the workshop series’ framework for challenging the existing strategies in architecture and construction. It combined the topic of sustainable design with broader concerns on “environment-making” (Jason Moore) in times of the Anthropocene. Every workshop formed an autonomous unit, comprising lectures, exercises, and discussions. The workshops highlighted the topics of “bricolage”, “care”, “imagination”, “data”, and “circularity”. At the end of the semester students collaboratively produced a manifesto on sustainable design, incorporating the knowledge gained throughout the semester.

Guest Speakers:
Christina Hemauer (Artist, Zurich)
Prof. Dr. Ena Llorett Fritschi (SNSF Professor, Accademia)
Prof. Dr. Madlen Kobi (Social Anthropologist, University of Fribourg)
Matthias Heinz (pool architekten, Zurich)
Peter Kneidinger (Materialnomaden, Vienna)
Roman Keller (Artist, Zurich)

Group Members:
Veronica Irene Bissanti
Valerio Maccabruno
Maria Trombetta
Gabrielė Dužinskytė

Group Members:
Gabrielė Dužinskytė
Varvara Sulema
Marie Sieber

Group Member:
Ulisse Iacopi