Angaben zur Professur

Lehrstuhl 

Professur M. Issoufou

Typ 

Professur für Architektur und Entwurf

Standort 

HIL

Webseite 

www.issoufou.arch.ethz.ch

Assistierende 

Soukaina Laabida, Rami Msallam, Alexander Cyrus Poulikakos, Tobia Rapelli, Filippo Santoni

Kontakt E-Mail 

rapelli@arch.ethz.ch

Angaben zur Entwurfsklasse

Typ 

Entwurf V-IX

Thema 

At the End of the World: Museums - Antikenmuseum Basel

Beschreibung
des Entwurfs-programmes 

This semester we will continue questioning Museums as institutions, buildings and practices. Our focus will shift to Basel, a city with colonial entanglements and a rich museum history, to work on the Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig. We will deepen our research on the Museum’s ecology, imagine new programs and reshape the role of the institution through architectural transformation projects. The Studio's mission aims for a "Decolonization from/of the Global Minority" by repositioning the institution and context in which we work, in order to better situate our perception within a long, entangled and multilayered understanding of our place in the world. Imagining architecture, institutions, and our societies “at the End of the World,” proposes to follow Denise Ferreira da Silva at the end of this World, as to refer to worlds in which we work collectively toward the dismantlement and transformation of the world system which perpetuates inequalities, racism and colonial legacies. Imagining at the End of the World urges us to re-evaluate and transform our societies’ relation to nature, land and people in times of environmental collapse. Imagining at the End of the World is answering to Mark Fischer’s “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” not as a distant desired utopia, but as an actual practice of collective emancipation. After two semesters working on ethnographic Museums, this semester we will shift the studio focus on a Museum collecting, conserving, studying and exhibiting artefacts classified as “Antiquities”. Specifically, the studio will focus on reimagining the role of the Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig, considering Basel's colonial history. In groups we will engage in a research phase to study the historical, cultural, economical and social contexts, as well as developing a deep understanding for the existing architectures and ecologies on the scale of the Museum’s site and of the city. The aim of our research is to generate collective knowledge and share it in the studio through the design of an exhibition that will serve as a base for the architectural transformation of the Museum. The exhibition will remain as a productive ground in the studio where to draw on for the entire duration of the semester. During the design phase, working in groups of three, we will create architectural scenarios to redefine the role of the Museum, when the collections of objects will no longer be the main reason for its existence. We will be questioning the intention of exhibiting “original” artefacts with regards to their heritage, reflecting an evolution of intellectual accumulation, appropriation and the Museum’s collection. While understanding the future institution still as a Museum, we will craft alternative programs and develop architectural concepts by investigating the relationships between the Museum's existing buildings, its outside spaces, the surrounding city and any new content, uses and users. We will shape architectural interventions with a deep knowledge of what the existing buildings, spaces and structures can provide and perform, intervening there where they can’t. In order to operate architectural transformations we will discuss what can be kept, modified, removed or added following clear sustainable transformation strategies. We will be realizing spatial ideas within the existing, being aware that adaptive reuse is already a form of sustainability, but also taking into account all other forms it can take, from the material choices to the construction techniques, back to the social and cultural impacts that our architectural decisions produce. Throughout the semester our program will be enriched with a site visit, numerous guest lectures, inputs and collective readings to deepen and discuss our knowledge on the site anchor, as well as decolonial and architectural practices.

Thematische und methodische Schwerpunkte 

Entwurf, Staedtebau, Handwerk, Visualisierungen, Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur

Lernziele 

Through the 19th and 20th centuries, Museums have been active agents of colonization and dispossession. They contain artifacts from all over the world, and many from formerly colonized lands. Many objects from their collection do possess violent pasts, and are today triggering public awareness. Effectively, these objects' histories can no longer be neutralized through scenographies and institutional politics. Museums around the globe are under pressure, and their politics, practices and spaces are urged to be rethought to propose non-colonial and non-imperial solutions. What would that process look like? What are the implications for the museum and its collections? Are objects a museum's only raison d'être? Does the urgency of repatriation/rematriation imply that museums must be entirely redesigned? Are there ways we can envisage culture without consuming it in its current exploitative form? While exploring these questions, we will intersect notions of sustainability and heritage within institutional and architectural practices. Through research and design, we will navigate and propose provisional and situated answers to the following problematics: How can we denaturalize the uneven access to objects and knowledge? How do we deal with these objects and their violent histories if they are not rematriated/repatriated, and which traces (if any) to keep of them when they are restituted? What spaces, uses, needs, and practices emerge from these politics, ethics and reparations? How do we think of spaces for restitution, repair, and what is beyond repair? The return of ill-acquired objects will eventually be inevitable as evident from the current turmoil surrounding the question. Imagining what it would mean allows us to be armed with positive solutions for something new and engaging rather than allowing fear to maintain us on the wrong side of history. As we imagine a world several years in the future where Museums no longer own these objects in their collections, it begs the question: What are the futurities of museums at the End of the World? By questioning the Antikenmuseum Basel as an Institution we aim to practice a decolonization of knowledge, and of the architectural practice mindset. We rely on the notion of intersectional sustainability, which requires decolonizing processes, materials, labor, and practices within global mechanisms of architectural production. The objective is to develop projects that move away from politics of exploitation and accumulation and imagine positive contributions for an evolving institution and its architectural typology. Shaping the future Museum is the purpose of our architectural intervention. We aim to exercise transformation strategies on the existing building complex, developed over time and combining diverse architectural languages. While inserting new uses and users, we will discuss what to preserve, modify, take away or add to the architectural heritage of our site.

LV-Nr. des Entwurfs 

052-1124-25

Zusätzliche integrierte Disziplin(en) 

Unterrichts-sprache 

Englisch

Arbeitsweise 

Nur Gruppenarbeit

Daten Zwischenkritiken 

11.03.2025 + 15.04.2025

Datum Schlusskritik 

27.05.2025

Einführungs-veranstaltung 

18.02.2025

Zusätzliche Kosten 

CHF 50 (Schätzung, ohne allfällige Kosten für Modellbau und Seminarwoche)

Verfügbare Plätze 

34

Plakat des Entwurfs-programmes 

Plakat ansehen (PDF Datei)

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