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【Lecture 25.05.2026】 In Search of Autonomy: Swiss Architecture ca 1970-2000
Release time：2026-05-25
Prof. Laurent Stalder
Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta)School of Architecture ETH Zurich
Laurent Stalder has been Professor at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zurich since 2006, from 2017 to 2021 as the director of the institute. In 2009 he was a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in fall semester 2019 was guest professor for 《Architectural Behaviorology》 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The main focus of his research and publications is the history and theory of architecture from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries where it intersects with the history of technology. His most recent publications include:
Architectural Ethnography (Toto Publisher 2018, with Momoyo Kaijima and Yu Iseki)
Un Dessin n' est pas un Plan (Caryatides, 2023)
On Arrows, Essays in British Architecture and its Environments (MIT Press 2025)
Introduction
In view of Switzerland' s rapid urbanisation, the ever-accelerating pace of technological change, the growing number of regulations and guidelines, and the diminishing role of the architect in the construction process, calls began to be made around 1970 to redefine architecture as an independent discipline. This formed the essential basis for the successful refoundation' of Swiss architecture, which was to find expression in the work of architects such as Mario Botta, Flora Ruchat, Herzog & de Meuron, or Valerio Olgiati. However, this claim to an autonomous discipline must also be understood as an expression of aprofound crisis regarding the status of the architect as a critical subject within a changed political and economic context. For a postulate of autonomy can only be put forward by a discipline that believes it is losing its status.
Conversation
Professor LIU Yichun
The principal, chief architect, Atelier Deshaus
Honorary director of Architectural Department, CAUP, Tongji University
Host
Professor LU Yongyi
Architectural Department, CAUP, Tongji University
Time
Monday, May 25, 2026 | 18:00-20:00
Venue
Building D, Lecture room D2, CAUP, Tongji University
