Annexe (Elena Chiavi, Kathrin Füglister, Amy Perkins and Myriam Uzor)

Location: gta Foyer

And what if taking a break was part of the action? For this year’s parity talks, Annexe will bring the entracte on stage, offering a scenery that is open for everybody. With a minimal layout of adaptable furniture Annexe will activate and entertain the ETH Foyer, giving room to lectures, apéro, lunch, coffee breaks, informal chats and discussions.

Inspired by the former Saffa Pavilion by architect Berta Rahm, the Annexe project was conceived in 2021 as a way to bring together feminist discourse through docking performatively onto existing spaces and expanding their potential uses. The furniture continues to plug into existing institutions and offer new exterior and interior spaces for social interaction.

Panel Discussion: GOOD-USE: Helping Neighbours and Supporting Locals with Architectural Re-use

Nastya Ponomaryova (gta institute x CO-HATY Ukraine) convening

Location: gta Foyer

12–1:30 pm

The re-use of old buildings and their components helps to create sustainable accommodation for forcibly displaced people in a reasonably short amount of time. However, inhabiting non-housing facilities requires space adjustments. Minimising the use of new elements due to limited availability, means hunting for more vacant old buildings and free components. Such initiatives as CO-HATY (Ukraine), BUDO and OKNO (Poland) and RE-WIN (Switzerland) are experimenting with research-based adaptation of reclaimed building elements. The panel will talk about international cooperation, process organisation, and design strategies in their projects.

Anastasia Ponomaryova is an architect and research fellow at the gta institute of ETH Zurich and co-founder of co-haty project (Ukraine).

Zofia Jaworowska is an activist and the founder of the BRDA Foundation which carries out the OKNO and BUDO projects dedicated to social aspects of material re-use (fundacjabrda.org)

Zuzanna Mielczarek is an architect and a curator from the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning (niaiu.pl) in Warsaw, member of the BUDO initiative.

Michał Sikorski is an architect and urban planner, and the founder of TŁO (tlo.archi).

Dean’s Office x gta institute

Location: HIL E4

5:30–7 pm

Dr. Paul Bouet is the first Egon Eiermann Postdoctoral Fellow at the gta institute. He is an architectural and environmental historian, holding master’s degrees in architecture from ENSA Paris-​Belleville (2012) and in the history of science and technology from EHESS (2017), and a PhD in architecture from Université Gustave Eiffel (2022). His work investigates the cross histories of architecture and the environment in the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on research about adaptation to climate, experiments with alternative energies, the emergence of environmentalist theories, the aesthetics of energy devices, and colonial and postcolonial circulations of technologies and knowledge. He lectures at ENSA Paris-​Est and Haute école d’ingénierie et d’architecture Fribourg.

Athena Lecture by Anna Puigjaner, followed by a Q&A with Jennifer Duyne Barenstein

ETH Wohnforum x Parity Group

Location: HIL E3 with following apero at gta Foyer

7–8:30 pm

This year's Athena Lecture will be given by architect and researcher Anna Puigjaner, Professor of Architecture and Care at D-​ARCH. In her lecture “Towards a Diffuse House” she critically examines how gender biases are empowered through the built environment, in particular through the relation between domesticity and care, turning visible the capacity that dismantling this relation might have.

Annexe (Elena Chiavi, Kathrin Füglister, Amy Perkins and Myriam Uzor)

Location: gta Foyer

And what if taking a break was part of the action? For this year’s parity talks, Annexe will bring the entracte on stage, offering a scenery that is open for everybody. With a minimal layout of adaptable furniture Annexe will activate and entertain the ETH Foyer, giving room to lectures, apéro, lunch, coffee breaks, informal chats and discussions.

Inspired by the former Saffa Pavilion by architect Berta Rahm, the Annexe project was conceived in 2021 as a way to bring together feminist discourse through docking performatively onto existing spaces and expanding their potential uses. The furniture continues to plug into existing institutions and offer new exterior and interior spaces for social interaction.

Parity Group x PDK x SEKUNDOS x Dabke Lab

Location: HIL777 (HIL Main Entrace)

9–9:30 am

We warm up to this year’s edition of the Parity Talks with some dance moves organised by SEKUNDOS and Dabke Lab. Afterwards, gipfeli and coffee are served at gta Foyer.

Parity Base: gta Foyer curated for Parity Talks by Annexe

HIL, ETH Hönggerberg

SEKUNDOS x Dabke Lab

Location: HIL 777 (HIL D Foyer)

9:45–11 am

No registration needed

Last year’s Parity Talks, SEKUNDOS hosted a musical picnic in HIB Open Space, where we collectively listened to music and sounds to recognize hidden identities in institutional spaces: a “place-making” event that provided an alternative use and image for our institution. This year, Sekundos follows up on this by inviting the Dabke.lab for a Palestinian Dabke workshop. Dabkeh (Arabic: دبکة, "kick") is a folk dance known for its footwork, with several regional versions. The movements emphasise unity and provide a history and connection to the soil of the land. Often the dance takes place at weddings, banquets, and occasional parties. Dabke.lab organises dance workshops at the Dynamo in Zürich, has participated in Swiss dance events and worked in collaboration with the professional Palestinian dancer Samer Karaja, member of Al Funoun Dance Troupe.

gta Archives inviting Nieuwe Instituut x Fluid Archive x SEKUNDOS

Location: HIL E 71.1 (Dean's Seminar Room)

9:45–12 am

Limited places. Please register here.

The collaborative workshop ‘The Counter-Archive' organised by Archiving Absence (gta archives) and Collecting Otherwise (Nieuwe Instituut) explores how architecture archives could enable the construction of inclusive and decolonizing histories. It envisages a network of restorative Counter-Archives, enacting alternative ways of amassing evidence and collecting knowledge to re-evaluate inherited histories. The Counter-Archive workshop offers the space to plan (new) versions of bottom-up and counter-archives, situated in the bandwidth of grassroots-institutional and donor-hosting archives. Several scenarios for action and care will be discussed, ranging from zines, social media-accounts, and distributed (sound-)recordings, to productive interfaces with existing institutional platforms. Documentation of the workshop (taking the workshop itself as a strategy for archiving), and the Counter-Archives typologies, will be offered afterwards on Miro and via a sampled audio documentation-as-storytelling.

Nastya Ponomaryova (CO-HATY) x Zofia Jaworowska (OKNO) x Zuzanna Mielczarek (BUDO) x Michał Sikorski (BUDO) x Oliver Burch (UCJ), hosted by universum carrousel journey

Location: Ours/Yours Office, HIL F56

9:45–12 am

Limited places. Please register here.

Bottom-up initiatives such as CO-HATY and OKNO use design to make a difference in crisis situations, but are challenged by difficult access to materials, such as doors.

When setting up a collective centre to meet urgent housing needs, a door is a truly multifunctional object. It serves as a physical and symbolic entry (or closure) of one’s private space but can also act as an element of ventilation, as a clothes rack... Re-using doors has a potential far beyond the open-close basics.

During our workshop we will explore design ideas for re-using a reclaimed door found in Basel and seek ways to install it in the co-haty collective center in Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine housing 140 internally displaced people because of the war. Together we will hunt for the creative potential of an object whose function is seemingly set in stone, and think about the possibility of creating partitions and transitions from other reclaimed materials and available resources.

AGN x Claudia Sinatra & Fem-o-poly Project Group

Location HIL E Foyer (in front of Baubibliothek)

9:45–12 am

No registration needed

“Credit Suisse will not pay their taxes; go back to start. You make your city safer for everyone: you skip a turn and receive 1 Care-Point.”

When looking at today's urban production, inequalities are everywhere. As cities around the world transform at a rapid pace, affordability is strangled, communities are displaced and dwellings demolished, allowing private investors to polish their real estate portfolios. With luxury developments looming, there are hardly any resources left for responsive reuse of our buildings, sensitive urban development and alternative forms of housing.

What would the city look like if a different kind of economy thrived? What futures would be possible under frameworks that put caring first? What sort of (urban and architectural) activism is imaginable to shape a city for the 99%?

In a game session including Care and Riots and Fem-o-poly, we as students, academics, architects, planners, and simply as residents become active co-creators of our futures. Through a playful approach, we aim to understand frictions in the urban economic system we live in, discuss struggles of spatial production, and explore alternative forms of decision making for social justice.

Parity Group

Location: HIL E4

12:30–2 pm

Nzinga Biegueng Mboup is a Dakar-based Senegalese architect who studied in Pretoria and London, practised in Johannesburg, London and Dakar, including three years with Adjaye Associates on the IFC headquarters in Dakar. In 2019, she co-founded Worofila, an architectural practice specialised in bioclimatic design and construction using earth and biomaterials sourced locally. The aim of Worofila is to promote an architecture that is durable and in harmony with the climate. Worofila has realised various earth projects such as the Sendou home, the Ngor house and the Goethe-Institut in collaboration with Kéré Architecture.

In addition to her architectural practice, Nzinga has been a researcher for the African Futures Institute since 2022 and has co-authored two research projects. Dakarmorphose started in 2017 in collaboration with Carole Diop and is an ongoing research project on the evolution of Lebu villages and the urban and cultural heritage of the city of Dakar. Habiter Dakar started in 2019 in collaboration with Caroline Geffriaud and the Goethe-institut Dakar, and focuses on the evolution and problematics of housing in Dakar.

HIL, ETH Hönggerberg

Jos Boys x Chair of Architecture and Care

Location: zoom and livestream HIL G65 + gta foyer

live stream:

https://ethz.zoom.us/j/7156845...

2:15-3:15 pm

Jos Boys is an architect, activist, educator, and writer. She was a founder member of Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative and co-author of their 1984 book Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment (Pluto Press 1984). Since 2008 she has been co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project with the artist Zoe Partington, a disability-led platform that brings together disabled artists and built environment students, educators and practitioners for creative and positive actions and dialogue that can demonstrate how disability is a valuable and generative force in design, rather than a technical and legalistic “problem”. Jos is author of Doing Disability Differently: an alternative handbook on architecture, dis/ability, and designing for everyday life (Routledge 2014) and editor of Disability, Space, Architecture: A Reader (Routledge 2017).

Unmasking Space x Gender Task Force TU Graz x Nazli Tümerdem with guests ifa_diaspora x Volta Mendrisio

Meeting walking for walk: gta Foyer

2:30–5 pm

Limited places. Please register here.

Walking: Towards a Guide for Grassroots Activism invites students, teaching staff, and professors to investigate pedagogical practices and forms of activism related to knowledge production across multiple university contexts. It brings together different initiatives developed by students and teachers around questions of knowledge production in their institutions.

Drawing upon the critical walking method practised by post-doctoral researcher Nazlı Tümerdem, the workshop maps sites of pedagogy on the D-ARCH campus by walking across locations proposed by the participants, and by contrasting diverse experiences and positions across institutions. By exploring, examining, and comparing the participants’ experiences in relation to their contexts, we bring manifold urgencies, methodologies, and active formats centre stage to help us tackle questions of learning and teaching.

NCCR DFAB x Human Error Project x ETH AI Center x Design++

Location: HIB Open Space 2 (Arch_Tec_Lab, ITA)

2:30–5 pm

Limited places. Please register here.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more prevalent in architecture and design. However, it is important to recognise that AI systems can perpetuate and reinforce biases in their training data. Because algorithms and AI systems are created by humans, they will always be shaped by the cultural values and beliefs of the people and societies that created them. In different focus groups, we will each look at AI from a different perspective. In a joint final discussion, different aspects of AI and biases will be addressed and all perspectives will be brought together.

Indiana collective with the support of Christ and Gantenbein Design Studio

Location: HIL H47 Studio Christ Gantenbein

2:30–5 pm

Limited places. Please register here.

“Our cities are patriarchy written in stone, brick, glass, and concrete” Jane Darke, The Man-Shaped City, 1996

Just like our cities, the spaces we inhabit produce and reproduce values and hierarchies of a patriarchal, capitalist, and individualist society. How can we design and build homes where reproductive labour is shared more equally, where it is made visible, collective, and more pleasant? How can we rethink existing flats to make them environmentally and socially sustainable through shared services and spaces? How can we think about flexible spaces able to accommodate multiple, extended, and inclusive biological and non-biological families?

The “un-drawing home” workshop – organised by the Indiana collective with the support of Christ and Gantenbein Design Studio – will try to answer these questions and explore the potential role of architects to become actors in transforming built environments and society starting from everyday life experiences of inhabitation. We will be drawing, re-drawing, and un-drawing existing floor-plans so bring your pens, colours and creativity!

Parity Base: DiD Lab curated for Parity Talks 8 by Newrope (Ellena Ehrl and Charlotte Schaeben)

Studio Affective Architectures/Dept. of the Ongoing x Engagement Arts x Dean’s Office joined by Studio Maria Conen

Location: ONA Fokushalle

3–5:30 pm

Limited places. Please register here.

Following the Engage D-ARCH report, the Dept. of the Ongoing (at the Chair of Affective Architectures) and Engagement Arts are currently developing a first version of a Code of Conduct (and a Complaint Procedure) for D-ARCH, in close collaboration with the Dean’s office. A Code of Conduct is a learning tool that helps us assess our behaviour and guides us towards a shared culture of respect and speaking up. This workshop, facilitated by Petra Van Brabandt (Engagement Arts, Engage D-ARCH report) and Els Silvrants-Barclay (Dept. of the Ongoing) puts this first draft to the test of real-life situations and experiences in D-ARCH.

All participants get access to the draft version of the Code of Conduct to read and make comments in advance (click here). The workshop itself starts with a short introduction to set the frame: what is a Code of Conduct and what are its potentials and limitations? After this, we discuss different cases of problematic behaviour or moral perplexity in small groups, including one case put forward by Studio Conen. We end with a plenary discussion to exchange our thoughts and gather feedback on the draft.

Studio Adam Caruso x Women Writing Architecture inviting Geraldine Tedder (gta exhibitions), Tine Milz (Theater Neumarkt) Alicia Yerebakan (aka Madame ETH)

Meeting Point: @ ONA DiD Lab

3–5:30 pm

Limited places. Please register here.

This workshop asks the crucial question: “can writing be activism?” Our starting point is that no, it can’t, unless it is activated within a social situation. After a short reflection on what the mechanisms for activation might be – from placards and body painting in demonstrations to the ideologies perpetuated through singing hymns in a church or performing poems at a slam, and, indeed, publishing, the workshop unfolds through two consecutive activities. These activities, or mechanisms of socialisation, are inspired by the studio’s weekly Reading Circle. In these, specific texts are ‘performed’ by a small group of students to their peers with the intention of generating a discussion that is used operatively and analogically within the conceptual brief-making and design process.

Activating the workshop will be a cross-generational team composed of: Emilie Appercé and Barbara Thüler from the Chair of Adam Caruso working with invited guests Helen Thomas of Women Writing Architecture, Geraldine Tedder of gta exhibitions, Tine Milz of Theater Neumarkt, Alicia Yerebakan aka Madame ETH of gta exhibitions book kiosk.

Volta x RumorOSA x Sierra musicians

Location: Aquarium Niche ONA Langhalle

3–5:30 pm

Limited places. Please register here.

Following up from last year’s workshop Sonic Imaginaries, we move from listening to making music. Whereas last year we focused on listening and being receptive to the soundscapes that surround us, we now take action by interacting and participating with the sounds in which we are immersed.

We will set up a collective and polyphonic practice, in which time (tempo) becomes a form of sympathy and tolerance, of balancing one's own voice, ideas, thoughts, as well as welcoming and including those of others. The rules of the spatial symphonies are not written dogmas and are open for the collective to take up and interpret. A travelling choral game in which we will move through different media, recorded as the first act of a chain reaction.

Through sonic interventions we will explore and reflect on the diversity of spatial experiences and the relationship between self, group and environment, questioning feelings of safety and exposure, intimacy and openness. Time will guide us. Just bring yourselves, musical instruments, sound devices... and/or any object that can add to the sound experience!

Parity Group

Location: ONA DiD Lab

Zoom link: https://ethz.zoom.us/j/3880566...

6–7 pm

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Eliana Perotti, Torsten Lange, Amy Perkins, Zhu Qianer, Shriya Chaudhry, Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk, Blanka Major & Els Silvrants-Barclay talk Parity Group and activism past and present as a follow-up to an interview with Vera Sacchetti in the framework of Prix Meret Oppenheim awarded in 2023 to the Parity Group.

Lea-Catherine Szacka and the Chair for the History and Theory of Urban Design x gta exhibitions

Location: ONA Fokushalle

7:30–9 pm

City Dreamers is a 2018 film by director Joseph Hillel. Featuring Denise Scott Brown, Phyllis Lambert, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, and Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, the film shows how four trailblazing women architects have been working, observing and thinking about the transformations shaping the cities of today and tomorrow for over 70 years. The film and the online exhibition resulting from the Spring 2022 seminar « The City in Theory - Her Agency » (developed with Cathelijne Nuijsink) will be presented by Léa-Catherine Szacka and Tom Avermaete in collaboration with gta exhibitions.

Sekundos x Parity Group

Location: ONA DiD Lab

starting 9 pm