Angaben zur Professur

Lehrstuhl 

Professur H. Klumpner

Typ 

Professur für Architektur und Städtebau

Standort 

ONA

Webseite 

www.klumpner.arch.ethz.ch

Assistierende 

Melika Konjicanin, Alejandro Jaramillo Quintero, Fernando Túlio Salva Rocha Franco

Kontakt E-Mail 

konjicanin@arch.ethz.ch

Angaben zur Entwurfsklasse

Typ 

Entwurf V-IX

Thema 

Festspiele - Reimagining Performative City Spaces

Beschreibung
des Entwurfs-programmes 

What is a festival today? Why urbanization, ecologization, and digitalization in architecture? Where should urban transformation be activated? “The carnival is the only time of the year when people take off their masks.” Popular proverb from the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Carnival in Barranquilla, 2024 “Organizing a … festival in Salzburg means reviving ancient living traditions in a new way; it means doing things in a new way in ancient, meaningful … places […].” Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Festspiele in Salzburg, 1921 The power of architecture is often overlooked when we experience both traditional high culture and emerging popular culture. Events such as the festivals in Salzburg, the carnival in the Caribbean, Burning Man, or popular street markets are as important as the rise of disruptive urban youth cultures such as Reggaeton, Skateistan, parkour, and breakdance performance spaces. Our aim is to discover and transform potential places for spectacles of all scales that can radically reshape today’s urban culture, fostering participatory placemaking for communal spaces of coexistence. Students will map, imagine, and design architecture through the lens of both the exceptional and the everyday culture of existing and new institutions. They will create their own site-specific festival as a spatial, social, and ecological intervention, aiming to propose alternative spaces for work, life, education, housing, dance, music, and digital performances—both in daylight and nightlife. Keywords: festivals, temporary urbanism, cultural infrastructure, spatial narratives, civic imaginaries, urban transformation, adaptive reuse, collective rituals, public space, inclusive design, mobility, ephemeral architecture, sustainable development, environmental choreography, landscape integration, social infrastructure, community activation, cultural legacy, participatory design, intergenerational dialogue, regenerative culture, city as stage, seasonal occupation, architectural prototypes. Salzburg stands at the intersection of cultural heritage and contemporary urban transformation. Internationally recognized for its Baroque architecture, alpine landscape, and the world-renowned Salzburg Festival, the city offers a unique context where history and performance converge. This rich cultural identity provides fertile ground for reimagining how festivals—as temporal, spatial, social, and ecological phenomena—can inform and inspire architectural and urban design. As a UNESCO World Heritage City and the birthplace of Mozart, Salzburg has long drawn global attention. Yet its success as a cultural destination brings with it critical urban challenges. Overtourism, rising housing costs, and the displacement of local communities are reshaping the city’s core. Public spaces are under increasing pressure, and mobility remains a persistent concern in a dense, historically preserved urban fabric. At the same time, climate-related vulnerabilities—including river flooding and heat stress—demand new ecological and infrastructural responses. This Design Studio positions the festival not only as a celebration but as a framework for temporary and permanent urban interventions—a lens through which to explore questions of identity, access, sustainability, and community. How might ephemeral events leave lasting spatial legacies? How can the design of festival infrastructure enhance the quality of public space, support local communities, and respond to environmental constraints? Students will investigate and propose architectural and urban prototypes that engage with Salzburg’s layered context. Projects may focus on reactivating underutilized spaces, designing mobile or modular interventions, integrating ecological systems, or rethinking circulation and staging across the city. Emphasis will be placed on strategies that are context-sensitive, inclusive, and adaptive—designs that acknowledge both the temporality of festivals and the permanence of their spatial impact. Through this approach, the studio explores how cultural programming can drive spatial innovation and how architecture can foster new modes of gathering, expression, and urban resilience. Salzburg becomes both site and subject: a city in which tradition and experimentation coexist, and where the festival becomes a vehicle for reimagining the future of urban life.

Thematische und methodische Schwerpunkte 

Entwurf, Staedtebau, Landschaftsarchitektur, Handwerk, Visualisierungen

Lernziele 

While cities contribute to the highest CO2 footprints, they also hold the potential to most effectively bend the carbon curve and take Climate Action in achieving 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 systems change in all sectors of life. Access to quality education (SDG 4), co-creating evolving frameworks for life-long learning, building capacity for transformative processes, strengthening and building new circular economies, making use of digital and analog tools, as well as how easy it is to access services in the city, are the foundation 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 overtourism, rising housing costs in the historic center, displacement of local residents to peripheral areas, climate-related vulnerabilities, mobility inefficiencies, and the need to preserve and adapt the Baroque and heritage urban fabric. Through this approach, the Design Studio seeks to create solutions that meet immediate needs while contributing to the long-term resilience and vitality of the urban environment. 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 in 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, consequentially 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_Region Scale: 1:200.000 B_City Scale: 1:10.000 C_Site Scale: 1:5.000 The driver for change is in architecture. We see this happening in cities like Medellín, Sarajevo, Tirana and Vienna. 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, recognizing 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, 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, configuring stakeholder groups, connecting top-down and bottom-up initiatives, idea mapping and concept mapping, designing of citizen scenarios. - Project Design: Synthesizing between different scenarios and the definition of a thesis and program between beneficiaries and stakeholders; we project process presentation 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 into the Urban Toolbox.

LV-Nr. des Entwurfs 

052-1139-25

Unterrichts-sprache 

English, German

Arbeitsweise 

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

Daten Zwischenkritiken 

03/11/2025

Datum Schlusskritik 

15/12/2025

Einführungs-veranstaltung 

16/09/2025; 09:30; ONA Studio, E25;

Zusätzliche Kosten 

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

Verfügbare Plätze 

42

Plakat des Entwurfs-programmes 

Plakat ansehen (PDF Datei)