Aligned with Labour Day, this year’s Parity Talks XI will take place on Wednesday 29 April 2026, starting from 12:00 on a stage in Stefano-Franscini-Platz, facing the HIL Building. Across a series of collective presentations and discussions, with invited guests, and during a shared dinner, we will come together to reflect on the following questions:

How do we work together? How are working cultures in architecture taught, lived, and practiced? What are the labour conditions and needs, across gendered, racialised, neurodivergent, migrant, and classed positions? What is the purpose and agency of our profession? What forms of change are we collectively aiming for? Whose work is valued more (or less)? What is the impact of precarious work conditions on our working culture – not just in architecture, but building in general?

Over the course of the afternoon, beyond an introduction and additional presentations, the program will be structured in four sessions titled: Migration, Class and Labour (with Paola de Martin, Samir, and Architecture for Refugees); Working in a Collective; Towards a Collective Contract (with UNIA and Architektur Basel); Architecture as Labour (with Marisa Cortright, Ena Kukić, and (non-)Swiss Architects). All of these conversations will be open to the students, faculty, and everyone is welcome to join the discussions at any time. The evening will be concluded with a food performance by ÿ collective, while the event will be recorded and made available as a podcast.

Next Monday, November 24 we once again invite you to a session with the Parity Group, this time at the Ämtli für Städtebau at Werdmühleplatz, at 18:30.

We will be focusing on working conditions within architecture, with an emphasis on intersectionality, coming into conversation with guests including (non-)Swiss Architects, a collective of architectural workers with a migrant background and Swiss allies.

This event is part of a series of gatherings which bring us together off-campus, situating us in a multitude of other institutions while giving us the distance to observe our own.

In solidarity,

The Parity Group

Next Monday, November 10 we warmly invite you to the semester’s opening (up) session with the Parity Group at ZAZ Bellerive. Beyond the public events from last spring, we want to find a way to create a space of community by gathering with tea to voice what is going on at and outside of school, as well as to show the baggages we carry with us to our study and work-spaces.

From working conditions and precarity, to academic freedom and the right to dissent, we aim to have a series of gatherings that bring us together off-campus. Through these conversations, we hope to address some of the tensions, exhaustions, struggles, dynamics—often commonly experienced—that affect us at the D-ARCH, to foster collective solidarity and to chart a collective path forward: standing up for one another, and standing together.

In solidarity,

The Parity Group

On its tenth anniversary, Parity Talks aims to facilitate a collective reflection on where we stand; What has been done? What have we achieved? What does doing parity work in the school mean? Where does the parity and diversity project stand at the D-ARCH? And – equally important – what is yet to be done?

We want to take this opportunity to look inwards, at institutional structures, questioning privileges and systematic discriminatory practices. We want to expand and elaborate our commitment to parity and diversity issues, and consciously tackle questions that are intimately linked to gender and sexuality but have not yet been adequately addressed, such as decolonial perspectives, classism, racism, ableism, and ageism among others.

On March 4th and 5th “Parity Talks X: Where do we stand?” in a series of talks, panels and workshops taking place at the D-ARCH across the HIL Building.

On Tuesday, March 4, Christina Varvia’s lecture “Across the Border” offered an invitation to question traditional notions of the body and borders and to think about alternatives based on interconnectedness and shared living spaces. Christina Varvia is a researcher and was formerly the Deputy Director of Forensic Architecture. She is currently a lecturer at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is pursuing her PhD at Aarhus University, where her research focuses on feminist and neomaterialist concepts of the human body within the context of investigative practices.

The ninth edition of Parity Talks will be taking place on March 5, 6 and 7th 2024. This year, we shift our focus to openly naming the issues which lead to disparity by finding ways to talk – from different positions and bases of knowledge. We aim for inclusive spaces, to share and – most importantly – to listen, in spite and because of the feelings of discomfort and inconvenience that come with it. 

In collaboration with gta Exhibitions and ETH Wohnforum, PARITY TALKS IX will combine  carefully curated lectures, discussions, and exhibitions with events and workshops coming from you – our community within – to give space and time for inconvenient yet critical questions: What does it mean to speak up even though it is inconvenient? Who is able to speak up? Why do we choose to remain silent? Where are our blind and deaf spots? Together, we will address how privilege and dominant narratives might impact who is allowed to speak and who is heard, and will set up collective experiments to expand our listening. 

In the upcoming Parity Talks we will focus on taking action and bringing together different actors. After asking what it takes to keep a conversation, a building, an institution in good condition, and reflecting on what we can learn from what’s already happening in the cracks of it, we now start gathering ideas to implement change. How do we mobilise and bring together the grassroot collectivities and intelligences already present (in a conversation, in a building, in an institution) to do what needs to be done and act upon what’s still missing?

“Parity Talks VIII: Get your act together!” will take place in the Architecture Department on the 7th & 8th March 2023. The Dean’s Talk with Paul Bouet, co-hosted by the Dean’s Office and the gta institute, and the Athena Lecture with Anna Puigjaner, co-hosted by the ETH Wohnforum, will kick things off on the evening of the 7th, followed by a day of workshops, discussions and talks on the 8th.

Building on the inputs from the last seven Talks, this edition aims to put things into practice: how to act through design, in what we teach, in how we work and learn together? An open call for actions led to the formation of new constellations and collaborations across different chairs, hierarchies, roles and entities in the department, reminding us that it takes mutual support, solidarity and empathy to get things done. We still act too much on our own terms, let’s get our act together.

Guest curator: Parity Group, ETH Zurich Location: ETH Hönggerberg, HIL E67 Rote Hölle Studio Jan de Vylder universum carrousel journey – Carrousel, series of lectures FS 2021

This year’s theme is ‘Upkeep’ and will turn the focus back on our own institution, discussing the process of keeping something, such as a building, a conversation, an institute, in good condition. In the wake of the Engage DARCH Report which identified and highlighted the work of all of the grassroots self-organized initiatives within the school, this year we are supporting and enabling these groups to help us construct the culture of the school from within.

‘Parity Talks VII: Upkeep’ will take place this year in person and in the Architecture Department on the 7th & 8th March 2022. The Athena Lecture, co-hosted by the Wohnforum will kick things off on the evening of the 7th with a lecture by Gabu Heindl, which will be followed by a day of workshops, discussions and talks. Building on all of the conversations and inputs we have had over the last six years, this year will be about keeping the conversation alive with direct actions through live workshops throughout the day.