An interview with Adam Caruso features in a new gta Verlag publication, Against and For Method. Edited by Jan Silberberger, the volume tries to tackle the deficiencies in studio teaching and proposes possibilities for integrating research approaches into teaching and practice.
It features a range of contributors, including Bernhard Böhm, Johan De Walsche, Kim Helmersen and Monika Kurath, among others. In addition to these essays, five interviews were conducted with practising architects, who are also studio professors at ETH Zurich. These contributions and conversations are intended to urge studio teachers to consider that conceptually coherent approaches aids their students.
Book design and photos © Brighten the Corners.
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Peter St John's London Met Unit will investigate the theme of Second Life. The term comes from the artist and social activist Theaster Gates, who states that almost everything can be reused. This is evident in his work which has involved collating discarded objects and materials, as well as salvaging and refurbishing whole buildings.
Students will look at the question of how to renew buildings; how construction can be less energy-demanding and creating systems where buildings are indivisible components in a regenerating ecological system.
Students in studio Adam Caruso at ETH Zurich will spend their Autumn semester working on a group of structures around Helvetiaplatz in Zurich. Through model-making and drawing students will engage with not only the adaptive reuse of existing buildings, but also how we can reframe the cultural value of them.
A publication charting the 14 year process of designing and building the Swiss Life Arena has been published by Park Books.
The book is by CCTM Real Estate & Infrastructure AG, with contributions by Ariana Pradal, Marco Keller, and Claudia Kaufmann-Morf, as well as photographs by and Philip Heckhausen.
Marco Biagi explores the approach of international practices to decommissioned industrial buildings. Citing a range of recently completed projects, including Caruso St John's Veemgebouw, he discusses the rise of adaptive reuse. Biagi explains through our urgent environmental crisis, the reuse of industrial plants and depots is more necessary than ever, offering a new challenging creative outlet for contemporary architects.
Profile
Der Standard
A visit to the pioneers of adaptation in Zurich
Vienna, Austria
17th December 2022
Maik Novotny visits Caruso St John's Zurich office to discuss the new arena for the ZSC Lions ice-hockey team and, despite the scale of its most recently completed project, discovers the practice's long-term interest and growing commitment to projects that prioritise renovation and adaptive re-use over new construction.
Matthew Blunderfield interviewed Thomas Demand in his Berlin Studio for Scaffold Podcast. Alongside discussing his practice in reference to trauma, fiction and chance, they explore his relationship with architecture. When talking about his collaborations with Caruso St John on Nagelhaus and The Triple Folly, Demand explains his position as both close to and separate from the role of architects.
Casabella issue 940 features a review Caruso St John's Complete Works, Volume I, published by Mack Books. Federico Tranfa commends the book's thematic collation of projects, found texts and commentaries, stating it is a 'courageous way to come to terms with the past, because it is not analysed a posteriori, but instead with the cultural context of the epoch of pertinence'.
Michael Schneider spoke to Jonathan Jaeggi of Hochparterre's Sach & Krach podcast, about the recently completed Swiss Life Arena. The two discuss the building's strong façade, its complex planning and construction alongside the importance of injecting humour into architecture.
Edmund Fowles, director of Feilden Fowles Architects, reviews Caruso St John's monograph published by Mack books. Discussing the books openness, he praises the presentation of projects and references alongside commentaries, a 'constellation of culture, memory, construction and emotion'.
Caruso St John's newly opened Swiss Life Arena is reviewed in Hochparterre. Deborah Fehlmann explores the project's materiality and composition, touching on its fabric inspired façade and efficient internal organisation.
Sofie De Caigny, director of the Flanders Architecture Institute, reviewed Caruso St John's Collected Works: Volume I for Drawing Matter. She discusses the book's choice to submerge the reader into the cultural sphere of the end of the 20th century, through contemporary texts, lectures and references.
Caruso St John's Veemgebouw building is reviewed in the Architects Journal's Climate Crisis issue. Rob Wilson explores the project's respectful and flexible retrofit of the listed 1940s warehouse, part of the former Philips factory complex. The building now provides a mix of housing above a range of public and commercial spaces.