Angaben zur Professur

Lehrstuhl 

Professur H. Klumpner

Typ 

Professur für Architektur und Städtebau

Standort 

ONA

Webseite 

www.klumpner.arch.ethz.ch

Assistierende 

Michael Walczak, Melika Konjičanin

Kontakt E-Mail 

konjicanin@arch.ethz.ch

Angaben zur Entwurfsklasse

Typ 

Entwurf V-IX

Thema 

Designing Urban Imaginaries: Urban Transformation Medellín, Colombia

Beschreibung
des Entwurfs-programmes 

What does it mean to reimagine the cities of tomorrow? How do we design urban futures that empower the many, rather than enrich the few? Can architecture act as a practice of negotiation, real change, and climate adaptation? Medellín offers a compelling context through which to explore these questions. Once known globally for violence and deep social inequality, the city has redefined itself as a leading example of urban regeneration and social innovation. Today, Medellín stands as a model of resilience, navigating rapid urbanization and immediate post-disaster realities while striving to foster social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and equitable access to urban opportunities. Over the past decade, Medellín has strengthened its position as an important reference in environmental urbanism through initiatives such as the Cinturón Verde (Green Belt) and a growing network of green and blue corridors. These projects reflect the city’s ambition to integrate ecological restoration, climate resilience, and inclusive urban development. Medellín’s transformation is not only physical—it is deeply social and collective. Projects such as the Metrocable, public libraries, parks, and civic spaces in informal settlements demonstrate how infrastructure can reduce inequality and improve access to opportunity. Medellín’s reggaeton culture also shows how cultural production can shape collective identity and urban imaginaries. Together, these spatial, environmental, and cultural processes reveal how urban transformation emerges from the interaction between design, lived experience, and collective expression. At the core of Medellín’s urban evolution lies the concept of the urban imaginary—the collective capacity to envision alternative futures and develop strategies that amplify marginalized voices in shaping the future of their built and natural environments. True transformation becomes possible when alliances are forged, when diverse actors meet at a common table to negotiate, deliberate, and build solutions together. This understanding is translated into the studio through the recently published Manual for Designing Urban Imaginaries Colombia, developed within our chair. More than a reference publication, the book provides the studio’s teaching methodology. Organized around the three core processes of Thinking, Building, and Living, its 18-step framework guides students from analyzing complex urban challenges to developing architectural prototypes and long-term, climate-resilient urban strategies. Using this methodology, the design studio approaches Medellín at the intersection of urban research, design, activism, and post-disaster adaptation. Students are invited to critically analyze assigned territories and develop design strategies that respond to social and environmental challenges. Through these tasks, students will learn to use advanced digital tools and large-scale datasets to map complex conditions and translate them into architectural and urban prototypes. In doing so, scientific, cultural, and lived knowledge must converge to address the paradox of hyper-diversity and inequality that defines many contemporary urban contexts. Medellín reminds us that reimagining urban life is not merely an architectural process. It is a deeply human one, rooted in participation, resilience, and the power of collective imagination.

Thematische und methodische Schwerpunkte 

Entwurf, Staedtebau, Landschaftsarchitektur, Handwerk, Visualisierungen

Lernziele 

While cities contribute to some of the highest CO₂ footprints, they also have the potential to most effectively bend the carbon curve and take climate action to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Moving towards decarbonized ways of living and making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, and resilient (SDG 11) will require behavioral and systemic change across all sectors of life. Access to quality education (SDG 4), co-creating evolving frameworks for lifelong learning, building capacity for transformative processes, strengthening and developing new circular economies, using digital and analog tools, and improving access to city services are foundations for designing and maintaining sustainable urban futures. In alignment with these principles, the central thesis of this Design Studio focuses on the conceptualization and design of innovative architectural and urban prototypes. These designs aim to address and respond to the complex challenges posed by green and blue infrastructure, climate corridors, informal settlements, urban densification, the circular economy, social sustainability, and the re-naturalization of urban landscapes. Through this approach, the Design Studio seeks to create solutions that meet immediate needs while contributing to the long-term resilience and vitality of urban environments. Students are introduced to tools and immersed in our Chair’s “method-design” to develop their prototypical design projects by: 1.) Base-Line: We design a continuum of architectural, urban, and planning scales to collaboratively develop a basis for how the city is now. 2.) Mapping: By identifying existing and future challenges and opportunities, we take the role of stakeholders and visualize our demands and resources into three different scenarios. 3.) Concept Design: We develop an urbanistic synthesis and translate a concept into an evidence-based prototypical architectural project- intervention. 4.) Prototype Design: We present the synthesis of our process in time and space on different scales. We frame the design projects as a narrative, consequently developed and communicated in analog and digital graphic representations. 5.) Upscaling: We test our project concepts and upscale prototypes through design-policy recommendations to make them transferable in Medellín and other cities. The design studio focuses on the transformative redevelopment of the city on three scales: A_Metropolitan Scale: 1:50.000 / Metropolitan Region B_City Scale: 1:10.000 / Medellín City C_Site Scale: 1:5.000 / Project Site _____________________________________________________ The driver for change in Latin America is architecture. We see this happening in cities like Medellín, Bogotá, Barrio Arajo, and São Paulo. Architecture is at the forefront of making transformations visible in preparation for a sustainable future. The next generation of designers is providing places of development, safety, and quality of life, which are essential for city governments. Architecture and Urban Design are translating these opportunities, entrepreneurship, and technologies into these cities. Changing the landscape and regenerating open neighborhoods is full of opportunities and architectural and natural beauty. From our Urban Stories lecture series, we have developed an urban toolbox that translates urban knowledge of internationally recognized development examples into strategic tools. We reference permanent and temporary strategies such as the destruction and reconstruction of Berlin, Informal settlement upgrading in Cape Town, Chengyecheon River Park, Seoul, Isarpark, Schlachthof / Munich, Corredores Verdes / Medellin or Cali, communal target-plan Zurich, closed highways in Sao Paulo or Bogota, etc. These spatial processes follow a widely known practice of consolidating a sequence of transformations and short-term strategies for long-term value production. Urban and Landscape Design can create a measurable impact in cities by increasing social justice, health, and well-being. The development of robust frameworks adaptable to change enables processes for regeneration with long-term operational, environmental, and social benefits in response to global, local, and site-specific challenges. The role of architects is to imagine and model sustainable urban scenarios, recognize new possibilities, and to create multidimensional, transformative design strategies with long-term benefits for people and cities. Method-design We systematically engage students in the semester research topic to unlock their potential and skills towards developing prototypical design resolution on an urban and architectural scale. Identifying, understanding, and developing local stakeholder networks, so as to translate challenges into opportunities and negotiate diverse interests into strategic ideas for development, geo-references, inter-linked systems, diagrams, and maps. We develop design concepts for urban prototypes on different scales, framed by a narrative of a process that is consequently visualized and communicated in analog as well as digital tools. - Investigative Analysis/ Local Perspective: We register the existing, prioritizing challenges and opportunities through qualitative and quantitative information, mapping on different design scales and periods of time, configuring stakeholder groups, connecting top-down and bottom-up initiatives, idea mapping and concept mapping, and designing citizen scenarios. - Project Design: Synthesizing between different scenarios and the definition of a thesis and program between beneficiaries and stakeholders; we present the project process as a narrative embedded in multiple steps; describing an urban and architectural typology and prototypes; defining an urban paradigm. - Domain Shift: We shift and translate different domains, testing and evaluating the design in feedback loops, and include projects in the Urban Toolbox.

LV-Nr. des Entwurfs 

052-1139-26

Unterrichts-sprache 

English, German

Arbeitsweise 

Individual and group work, thereof 3 to 4 weeks group work

Daten Zwischenkritiken 

03/11/2026

Datum Schlusskritik 

15/12/2026

Einführungs-veranstaltung 

15/09/2026; 09:30; ONA, E25.

Zusätzliche Kosten 

CHF 150 (Schätzung, ohne allfällige Kosten für Modellbau und Seminarwoche)

Verfügbare Plätze 

42

Plakat des Entwurfs-programmes 

Plakat ansehen (PDF Datei)