Info on station+

Info

AGENDA

station+ (s+) is a teaching and research platform at the Institute for Design at the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich. It started in 2017 and is rooted in the collaborative film series Legislating Architecture, The Property Drama and Architecting after Politics (Brandlhuber+ Olaf Grawert and Christopher Roth, 2016 – 2018). These films explored the potential of film and storytelling to popularize discourses on themes, that shape architecture (from theory to practice). Building on this notion, s+ started as an architecture TV station. The idea was to further explore the potential of video and film as design tools for another kind of form-making: beyond the built object, between fact and fiction, in space and time.

Conventional concepts of architecture are countered with proposals that challenge the underlying systematics that limit collective and individual imagining. We need new starting points in order to imagine alternative ways of designing the world. s+ aims at overcoming a retroactive architectural practice that only afterwards, legitimizes its formal decisions through fabricated tales. Instead, we seek to unlock the power of speculative architecting. Through embedding narratives the focus of design shifts from the object and its manifestation, to the argument behind it. Or, as Christopher Roth said: "Don’t complain. Design a strong argument. Compress the argument. If it does not survive compression, it is not a good argument. That is how we make TV."

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TEAM

Arno Brandlhuber (DE, 1964) is an architect and urban planner at bplus.xyz (Berlin) a collaborative practice that emerged from Brandlhuber+ (2006-2021). In his architectural production – from buildings to research to media – he is dealing with the existing building stock with a focus on legislation. In doing so, he understands the given not as a restriction but rather as an active design tool to challenge the norms. Besides buildings such as Brunnenstrasse 9, Antivilla or St. Agnes, this approach resulted in three films: Legislating Architecture (2016), The Property Drama (2017), and Architecting after Politics (2018) – together with director Christopher Roth. It was this engagement with the medium of film and its political and spatial potential that led to the founding of station+ at ETH Zurich in 2017. Together with Olaf Grawert and Christopher Roth. A collaboration that continued and resulted in 2038 - The New Serenity; the German Pavillon at the 17th Venice Biennale, together with Olaf Grawert, Nikolaus Hirsch, and Christopher Roth.

Severin Bärenbold (CH, 1987) is a cinematographer and film producer based in Zurich. He studied cinematography in Paris. After graduating he co-founded the video production company Motor Productions, producing a variety of formats ranging from documentary to advertising, music videos and fiction film. His seminar Access to Tools focuses on the technical aspects and skills required in storytelling and the production of video formats and other time-based media. He is teaching with station+ at ETH Zurich since 2017.

Ludwig Engel (DE, 1982) is a futurologist and urbanist based in Berlin. Together with a dense network of collaborators, his post-disciplinary practice spans from teaching, researching, curating, writing, publishing to organizing workshops, conferences, discourse platforms and advising companies and public institutions on the impact of futures and utopias for society’s capabilities to create and design better tomorrows. Together with Julian Schubert he directs the Master’s program „Studio for Immediate Spaces“ at the Sandberg Instituut, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. He is collaborating with station+ at ETH Zurich since 2018.

Olaf Grawert (AT, 1987) plans, writes and talks about architecture with a focus on the political and economic conditions of spatial production. He works collaboratively between Berlin and Zurich in a close network of people and institutions, developing architectural projects between theory and practice – from campaigns, exhibitions, publications and films to teaching and building projects. He works in technical and editorial roles: is partner at 2038 and bplus.xyz (Berlin), co-editor of What is Architecture? and lecturer with station+ at ETH Zurich since 2017.

Pan Hu (CN, 1995) works as a freelance architect and researcher at the Case Studio of Günther Vogt in Zurich. During the past years, he gained experience with FAR in Berlin, Herzog & de Meuron in Basel and Team 2038, the German Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021. He further contributed to associated research projects such as Arch+ 236: Posthumane Architektur (2019) or New Modernity (ongoing). Together with Yufei He and James Horkulak, he initiated the research and design collective Dorsa. He is teaching at station+ ETH Zurich since 2022.

Elise Misao Hunchuck (CA) is a transdisciplinary researcher, editor, writer, and educator. Based in Berlin and Milan, Elise’s practice brings together architecture, landscape architecture, and media studies to research, write and teach about the political ecologies of sites in Canada, Japan, China, and Ukraine. She is the journal editor and curator of transmediale festival and an editorial board member for the journal SCAPEGOAT. Currently, she is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at GSAPP at Columbia University. Alongside Marco Ferrari and Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, she co-led the architectural design studio ADS7: Politics of the Atmosphere at the Royal College of Art in London (2019–2022). Elise is researching with s+ at ETH Zurich since 2023.

Alina Ana Kolar (AUT, 1990) is a communication scientist, creative strategist and curator specialised in visual cultures and political semiotics. She works at the intersection of art, activism and social change, with a particular focus on the visuality of political events and representations of the public. An expert in diverse and inclusive management across organisations, Alina has built global partnerships and specialist consultancies that move fluidly through the public and private creative sector. Between 2017-2022, she co-founded and led the international street newspaper, publishing house and philanthropic organisation Arts of the Working Class. She is researching and teaching with station+ at ETH Zurich since 2023.

Jolene Lee (MY, 1993) is a Berlin based architect and partner at bplus.xyz (Berlin). As a practicing architect she is interested in taking concepts and theories into reality. Her tool set encompasses representational narrative in conceptual design, entrepreneurial strategies in architecture and curation of architectural documentation. Since 2017, her architectural projects focus on live, work and third places in collaboration with Brandlhuber+, Muck Petzet Architekten and FAKT Office for Architecture. In her latest exploration, Jolene is researching and teaching with station+ at ETH Zurich since 2022.

Meghan Rolvien (DE, 1995) gained experience as an architect at Brandlhuber+ (Palermo) and Bruther (Paris), as well as a collaborator with NEXPO and Team 2038; the German Pavillon at the Venice Biennale 2021. She works both as an independent architect and in collaboration with ALIAS, Zurich. As part of activist collective ZAS* in Zurich, she deals with the transformation of existing buildings that are threatened to be demolished. As part of her interest in the consequences of demolition, she is further researching the effects of natural catastrophes on architecture, which she was awarded the Heinrich-Hatt-Bucher Prize for. This interest is further reflect in her teaching with station+ at ETH Zurich since 2021.

Research Fellows

Sam Ghantous
operates with the entanglements between architecture and contemporary digital + networked media. His installations situate interactive software simultaneously with constructed spaces and situations. Sam has exhibited with YveYANG Gallery, Postmasters Gallery, and ZKM, and has taught at Cornell, University of Toronto, and MIT where he received his Master of Architecture. He is a co-founder of FOREIGN OBJECTS, a multidisciplinary design and research studio. They have been supported by the Mozilla Creative Media Award, Bard Graduate Center, and have worked with the Internet Archive, New Museum, and Shannon Mattern.

As a research fellow with station+, Sam asks what architecture’s role should be if we increasingly depend on mediated social experiences to relate to one another. His focus will be on the apparent privacy of the home as it is undermined by communication technologies that broadcast private details about domestic life. If architects can’t shape these technologies, his proposal is to hack, or reshape our spaces’ relationship to them, defining alternative boundaries and edges between the private and public life of the home. Informing this effort will be a catalogue of lessons from a range of digital media environments today. These environments are the intimate and expansive spaces where the production, storage, distribution, and/ or reception of mass communication take place, from Esports Arenas to Smart Kitchens. Sam will produce installations that set up new private/ public situations while configuring these technologies in spaces.

Philipp Krüpe
is interested in the political conditions of space and its aesthetics. He is an architect, film producer and associate researcher at IGmA at the University of Stuttgart. Currently he scrutinises the intersections of digital memes and architecture. Together with Stephan Trüby he is cofounder of the platform rechteraeume.net, a digital Atlas of Authoritarian (Meta-)politics in Architecture, Urbanism and Culture. He holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Technical University of Munich and has worked for the magazines ARCH+ and Baumeister, and several cultural institutions such as Haus der Kunst Munich, Münchner Kammerspiele, Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin and Goethe Institute.

As a research fellow with station+, Philipp investigates the entanglements of memes and architecture. Memes are ubiquitous – the dominating cultural form of the internet. They can be made of images, texts, videos, music etc. Their structural logic is fed on imitation, mutation and circulation. Their attributes include countless levels of reference, remix, quotation, irony or even misunderstanding. Plus: this phenomenon does not only occur in the digital sphere but also in “offline” spaces – in cultural techniques such as architecture and spatial planning. Categories like aesthetics, authenticity, ideology, critique, realism or the vernacular (to name a few) are well established in the field of architectural theory. In this research project such categories are applied to memes to elaborate the similarities as well as differences between these two cultural forms. Apart from its theoretical content, the appropriate choice of the right medium and its performance are important elements of the project.

Jakob Walter
studied architecture in Leipzig, Weimar, and Zürich. For his Thesis project he created a podcast series about how to counteract housing demolition through the protection of rare species (cohabitation-podcast.ch). In the past year he has been working at the Berlin editorial office of ARCH+ where he was involved in the research and exhibition project Cohabitation (https:// archplus.net/en/cohabitation/).

As a research fellow with station+, Jakob furthers his work as a guest editor for an ARCH+ issue that discusses the financial realities of architectural production. This forthcoming issue will revolve around salaries, budgets, unionisation, and equality within architectural practice while presenting architecture offices and their financial and personnel structures. The issue aims to support a discourse that talks openly about money. Jakob will receive 1‘081.40 CHF per month from ETH Zurich for the research fellowship position.

Student Assistants

Former Team

Imprint

s+ [station.plus]
–
Studio Brandlhuber
Institute of Design and Architecture [IEA]
Department of Architecture [DARCH]
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [ETHZ]
–
HIL G57
Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5
CH—8049 Zurich
–
T +41 44 633 0428
E team.brandlhuber@arch.ethz.ch
W brandlhuber.arch.ethz.ch

Editing by Olaf Grawert
Design by The Laboratory of Manuel Buerger
Built by Systemantics

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