ETH Zurich – Institute for Urban Design
HIL H44.1 – Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5 – 8093 Zurich
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Kulturlandschaft I
Outside the major cities multiple requirements of peri-urban and peripheral rural space interfere with each other: the use of ground and space has to be renegotiated time and again between residential areas, agriculture, forestry, mobility, leisure activities and energy production. The demographic and socioeconomic change of our increasingly cross-linked society compound this process additionally. The bipolar pattern city - countryside doesn't exist anymore, neither in spatial nor in socio-economic or cultural respects. The rural areas, in many aspects, do not differ from urban agglomerations anymore: they are (in central Europe) relatively densely populated, easily accessible and easy to supply with goods, they have the same access to the global communication networks and they offer the same or similar living conditions. Farming as a defining economic activity loses increasingly its significance. So much so, that the Swiss Government declared years ago, that the whole of Switzerland can be described as urban.
If the urbanization of the country is looked upon as an opportunity, central questions about the future of the cultivated landscape can be raised on the basis of these changed and newly formed structures: Will the agricultural country turn into a leisure country? Will it remain the idyllic setting for the dream of a homestead for over 80% of Europeans? Where does the public domain start and end? What about the vitality of villages and small towns? How can food and resources be produced and transported in a cost-effective and energy neutral way? And what consequences for our lifestyle and settlement models arise from this?
The series of lectures about the cultured landscape (Kulturlandschaft) addresses these questions. The professorship of Kees Christiaanse has, on this account, invited selected experts in the fields of environmental history, agricultural economics, alpine research, settlement development, planning and architecture, to relate their experiences, projects and visions about the 'Kulturlandschaft'.
Lecture hall and time
HCI G7, Thursdays 10:00 to 12:00 am
Dates and lecturers
20.09.2012 Tim Rieniets, ETH Zürich
27.09.2012 Prof. Kees Christiaanse, ETH Zürich
04.10.2012 Michael Wagner, ETH Zürich
11.10.2012 Prof. Michael Jakob, EPF Lausanne
18.10.2012 Prof. Susanne Hauser, HdK Berlin
SEMINAR WEEK
01.11.2012 Prof. Peter Rieder, ETH Zürich
08.11.2012 Prof. Christian Wagner, HTW Chur
15.11.2012 Dan Handel, Bezalel Academy Jerusalem
22.11.2012 Prof. Mark Michaeli, TU München
29.11.2012 EXAM COLLOQUIUM
06.12.2012 SEMESTER END EXAM
This lecture series in the autumn semester 2012 is part of the main research Kulturlandschaft of the Chair for Architecture and Urban Design, Prof. Kees Christiaanse.
Contact: Michael Wagner
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