FS25: Shaping the public

As on buildings, traces of use are deposited on ‘public’ art. Similar to architecture, changes in context, use and reception take place as well. Both the immediate material environment and urban space can change and thus impair the impact or value of a work of art. Its iconography is also exposed to the factor of time: What content is conveyed and how?

The Hönggerberg campus can be seen as a miniature of an ideal city of post-war modernism; the representative satellite of ETH embodies Switzerland's understanding of technocracy around 1960. Its planner, Albert H. Steiner (1905-1996), had works by renowned contemporary artists strategically placed in the exterior and interior spaces. Sculptures and wall reliefs emphasize a park-like continuum, as is characteristic of the shaped public sphere of post-war modernism with its consistent separation of traffic and zoning.

In addition to the Hönggerberg campus, the project semester will take up other examples spread across the city of Zurich in order to examine relationships between art, architecture and urbanity in a comprehensive sense. It builds on the investigations from Interdependencies. Art in Architecture, Urban Development and the Public Sphere (MAS GTA spring semester 2024). The case studies will be enriched with new research, whereby the mediality of art in architecture and the specific public addressed in each case will be of particular interest. The knowledge gained over the course of the project semester will lead to the Percent for Art exhibition in autumn 2025, which will be realized at at the Architecture Department in collaboration with Archiv GTA and GTA Exhibitions.