PLANES IN RESONANCE
© Dylan Perrenoud
For nearly a decade now, ALICE Y1 pedagogy as always culminated at the end of the academic year in a construction workshop bringing over 200 actors together, stressing the collective nature of architecture – and of its teaching. The series of pictures taken a few weeks ago by Dylan Perrenoud convey the proposition to look at architecture as an -ing and not a thing. In May 2023, FOUNDATIONS were constructed that responded to the site and territory in parc Rigot and in the International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent gardens. This year, the pedagogical program entered the second RESONANCE phase named PLANES. Taking into consideration how they have been used by communities in Geneva, students repaired, maintained, or unbuild these FOUNDATIONS in the process of developing PLANES. PLANES is part of ALICE’s research cycle through which we not only build, but learn, architecture.
We live in a time when fundamental ecosystem disturbance announces its proximity through ecological precarity: abnormal climatic occurrences, pollution, and extinction (Tsing, 2018). It is essential that architecture is able to adapt to this change, but also to recognize its complicity by questioning the foundational lessons inherited from our teachers, from history, and our practices as professionals. By questioning if these foundations are adequate. How should we learn from the incredibly rich and abundant environments built up by the many cultures of this planet, both human and nonhuman? We have a choice in how we choose to listen to the world, to understand it, to re-read it. We have a choice as to which values we are willing to replace.
The ALICE Year One (Y1) program approaches this challenge to architectural practice in two ways. The first is its processual nature. For ALICE, architecture does not belong to an abstract world conceived as a series of coherent problems, a world where architecture would form objects to solve those pre-defined problems. Rather, architecture is always entangled in questions directly linked to our existence and therefore emergent in nature. As gestures and inventions, architecture has both cultural and technical meaning. These two aspects of architecture cannot be separated as they are of one and the same nature. The things that we invent and produce to act upon the space that we live in are extensions of our body. They are never static, but are in constant transformation, situated in relation to us as living individuals and societal beings, and in relation to the environment that is itself an evolving eco-system of other living organisms. Being alive, we—humans, plants, other species, our languages, our arts, our society—are in a perpetual state of becoming. Architecture is therefore both an expression and concretization of this aspect of becoming that we share with all life.
The second aspect that we stress in ALICE Y1 is architecture’s collective nature. Architecture is never made alone; it is a means of communicating in society and with the environment. The collective languages by which we discuss architecture plays a fundamental role in how we conceive of architecture itself and its role as an exteriorization of our bodies into the world (ref. Bernard Stiegler). Gestures – the making and the significations that emerge through making – form a cultural and technical language that we craft together. We think, speak, and make architecture together. ALICE Y1 emphasizes the collaborative nature of architecture by making projects as individuals, in pairs, as small groups, as collectives, and as one large group of people –collaborations within the ALICE team and with many public partnerships beyond the university. To emphasize the importance of the collective act, we have hypothesized, and succeeded, in thinking, designing, and building projects with 250 people, all authors and co-authors, as the culmination of the academic year. The most important aspect in the ALICE series is however not the final form of the end-of-year construction, but rather the explorative processes of its contributors, and the capacity of an articulated mise-en-espace to support the search for new forms of living together: through architecture, we learn. As such, the ALICE series becomes a research agenda through which we not only build, but learn, architecture.
Lessons of collective practice require regular periods of reflection: what have we learned about architecture and our environment as we produce architectural projects? How do we integrate this knowledge—for pedagogy, for students and teachers alike—into the next cycle to constantly improve our ways of practicing? After the single-year cycles of the ‘BECOMING’ program, we have adjusted the program to allow for a slower, evolving, acquisition of knowledge. RESONANCE is, for the first time, a three-year pedagogical cycle based on the three annual stages of FOUNDATIONS (2022-23), PLANES (2023-24), and SHELTERS (2024-25). During these three years, and in partnership with The International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, the Office cantonal de l’agriculture et de la nature, l’Office d’Urbanisme we build on the same sites, always in dialogue with what was left there by the previous Y1 class and the Y1 class that follows. In May 2023, FOUNDATIONS were constructed that responded to the site and territory; in May 2024, PLANES will respond to these foundations taking into consideration how these FOUNDATIONS have been used by communities in Geneva. We will repair, maintain, or unbuild these FOUNDATIONS in the process.
Through this pedagogical approach, we hope and believe that such an architecture can shift values. Architectures are not only problem-solvers. They have the potential to relocate values – from profit in a capital fixed economy to an ecology and economy of space and of contribution. We continue to learn how to relate architectures to the ground. How to situate ideas and spatial constructs, not only in society, but also in relation to life in general, to our resources on this planet, and very literally how to root architecture, how we let it live, how we let it become. It is in the spirit of ecological and social urgency that we propose to work on values other than efficiency, profitability, typology, or expertise. In initiating architecture as an -ing and not a thing. Architecting would be the thinking and making of space according to intrinsic principles of contributing and caring, acts that imply value, values that change, values based on both the individual and collective desire of experts and non-experts alike. We must think of new tools to unlearn and relearn architecture. Values will shift and forms may be very different. At times, these values may resurface from another moment in our pre-industrial histories. They may be values of contribution and not consumption.
It is here that such architectures may embark upon other routes. They may emerge not as rigidly ordinated and easily legible objects, packaged in eloquent speech, or used as functional machines in view of a purpose. Spaces may rather take on a strange form and resemble organisms like whole cities, with their many imperfections and in- consistencies. They may become constructs embodying collective histories of deliberation rather than embodiments of the architectural canon. They may, at times, sound like symphonies – louder reverberations in the streets followed by quieter whispers in the night. They may be uncomfortably polyphonic (ref: Anna Tsing). Grounds, plants, structures, rhythms, details, materials may all evolve with our guidance by themselves into new forms in the interplay with many and in continual, ongoing deliberation. It is the open field of potential that draws out new collective ideas, to be brought into material life through open operations, intrinsically coordinated.
Such an architecture is again immersive. As such, it must respond to the experiential comprehension of the places that we live in. Such an architecture is also a political practice. The way we design space reconfigures matter, places, people, and biological life. To act upon space is a collective responsibility. We must therefore, first and foremost, question the individual values that exercise control in these actions and look for ways to allow collective values to emerge. And we must find ways to form collectives in order to find these answers.
Dieter Dietz and Laila Seewang, Zurich, August 2023
STUDENTS
METASTUDIO : Nolwenn Alibert, Matis Althaus, Loïc Bubendorf, Zoê Cicéron, Héléna Desplanque-Cortez, Jeanne Durchon Tallec, Thomas Fodor, Coralie Hachemane, Roxane Heard, Lionel Jaccard, Pierre Jeannin, Inés Jiménez Alvarez, Cristina Martinez Nunez, Awa Ndiaye, Mylène Rosselet, Ágnes Szakál, Tosca Virgillito & Arianna Frascoli.
STUDIO ALTIPLANO : Claire Alessandrini, Samuel Aliberti, Léo Boichat, Hassan Boutaleb, Alice Caye, Lina Chaâbi, Louis Fillistorf, Amélie Gauglhofer, Gabriel Guyot, Tâm Huynh, Alexandre Irrausch, Chiara Mariani, Cyril Matala-Tala, Julien Mauron, Alfred Mehchi, Lesia Mykoliuk, Rafael Righini, Nisia Simona, Jarun Thasarathan, Margaux Vaucher & Nessim Kaufmann.
STUDIO CURIOSO : Nora Abelsen-Ramushi, Emmanuelle Abi-Karam, Luka Aleksic, Quentin Durand, Nathan Engel, Diane Gasser, Stella Guicciardi, Luisa Luther, Lara Margato Azevedo, Felix Mascotto, Malia Prior, Anthony Ray, Jordane Saby, Cecilia Sjöström, Gian Stalder, Léonie Valenza, Lina Younes, Marthe Dufouleur & Rosa Climent.
STUDIO ECHO : Julie Arbre, Elena Asselin De Williencourt, Eva Bermudez, Emile Berney, Lorane Cuche, Louise Durand, Karla Florin, Nicolas Hählen, Noa Moreillon, Noémie Peterschmitt, Arnaud Pitteloud, Ostap Pshyk, Giorgia Scotti, Axel Villeroy, Lise Zen-Ruffinen & Bianca Boeckle.
STUDIO FAIRE : Apolline Achard, Inès Bérard, Louise Bonnaz, Lilas Couture, Théo Devins, Luna Faundez, Arthur Favre, Stéphane Hadorn, Thaïs Hébert, Luka Imgrüt, Jin Losey, Sonia Moradi Lakeh, Rania Ouazzani Hassani, Corina Paglia, Eloise Pennacino, Roxane Scott, Alexandre Sennwald, Marc Zurbuchen & Nikhil Calas.
STUDIO ORDINAIRE : Romane Bach, Eliott Croubalian, Zoya Falzone, Lucio Giambonini, Amy Harlow, Arthur Legrand, Myriam Maire, Anaïs Moix, Asya Padlina, Helori Saout, Matteo Schaub, Iván Serrano Herrero, Shanon Thévenaz, Sarah Wood, Agustín Yorimoto Alanes & Yann Salzmann.
STUDIO PUNCTUM : Jailane Alsoudy, Hélia Birchmeier, Magnolia Bou Obeid, Chloé Cartier, Iryna Courvoisier, Layla Delachaux, Liam Der, Patrick Eggimann, Julie Garey, Salomé Gazeau, Iulia Grigorita, Sofiya Lysenko, Eloïse Mouttet, Lisa Singy, Damiano Stabile & Annabelle Thüring.
STUDIO RATIO : Ilias Amirat, Divna Arora, Adeline Braun, Livio Castan, Eléonore Cicchini, Kiran Dupuy, Abdullah Ezzo, Loyse Graf, Basile Jespersen, Bassmala Karbal, Marine Leroy, Alicia Meyer, Victor Monfredo, Milla Morel, Mathilda Rotondo, Oriane Tenthorey, Maud Warpelin & Marius Slawik.
STUDIO SPELL : Thomas Campagnoli, Salomé Disch, Melvin Froidevaux, Clémentine Gillard, Samuel Jaccard, Zoé Kaiser, Mika Lavine, Léa Leboulanger, Naomi Messmer, Lhiam Rossier, Clothilde Roten, Kelly Tan, Milo Van Caenegem & Claire Logoz.
STUDIO TERRESTRE・VIRAL : Endrit Bajrami, Morgane Buyssens, Mickael Daâdoucha, Clémentine Denis, Laura-Grâce Carfagno, Maëlle Corajoud, Florent Gumy, Olive Hay, Maya Letovanec, Tiago Lopes, Elio Pahud, Anouck Pean, Alissa Recarey, Lili Schwartz, Amandine Touflan & Capucine Fouquin.
STUDIO ZONE : Théo Adam, Fanny Bernard, Malo Berthoud, Inès Carron, Valentin Dutoit, Emmanuelle Ebuenga, Matilde Fournier, Arthur Hirt, Najwa Horo, Julien Malis, Hady Mansour, Elisabeth Silva, Paul Sittig, Amélie Suter, Rajah Zine & Roman Alonso.
STUDIO ! :Mattéo Arbet-Engels, Catarina Brito De Mello Elias, Romain Crettaz, Farida Elraey, Meryem Guessous, Lina Guidoum, Téa Lambelet, Césarine Linchet, Magali Michaud, Elemér Nagy, Audrey Nussbaum, Noah Sagne, Malcom Sandoz, Emilie Sautenet, Léonie Theubet, Dmitry Vydrenkov, Lou-Ana Weill & Bastian Marzoli.
STUDENT ASSISTANTS
Léo Bastianelli, David Biedermann, Marie Bourdon, Juliette Chantraine, Louise Chappuis, Adrien Clairac, Adam El-Hamadeh, Maria Fenoglio, Anna Hausel, Theo Kurz, Romain Masoni, Serena Mazzetti, François Mégret, Louis Meier, Gabriel Ogbonna, Alice Proietti, Melanie Schroff & Raphael Staubli
EDITION TEAM
Luka Aleksic, Samuel Aliberti, Jailane Alsoudy, Inès Bérard, Eliott Croubalian, Clémentine Denis, Théo Devins, Matilde Fournier, Diane Gasser, Iulia Grigorita, Stella Guicciardi, Gabriel Guyot, Roxane Heard, Luka Imgrüt, Basile Jespersen, Téa Lambelet, Arthur Legrand, Jin Losey, Milla Morel, Corina Paglia, Anouck Pean, Eloise Pennacino, Giorgia Scotti & Tosca Virgillito
Claire Logoz, Julie Meyer, Manuel Potterat & Yann Salzmann
ALICE ADMINISTRATION
Jaime Ruiz
ALICE COMMUNICATIONS
Claire Logoz
ALICE RESEARCH, DESIGN RESEARCH & TECHNE POLES
Emmanuelle Agustoni, Raffael Baur, Aurélie Dupuis, Antoine Foehrenbacher, Aitor Frias Sanchez, Léa Guillotin, Julien Lafontaine Carboni, Nagy Makhlouf, Estefania Mompean Botias, Léonore Némec, Aurèle Pulfer, Joaquín Perailes Santiago, Fulya Selcuk, Malcom Onifadé, Elena Orap & Eloïse Vo
ALICE Y1 TEAM
Roman Alonso, Bianca Boeckle, Nikhil Calas, Teresa Cheung, Rosa Climent, Capucine Fouquin, Arianna Frascoli, Nessim Kaufmann, Claire Logoz, Bastian Marzoli, Julie Meyer, Alia Bengana, Manuel Potterat, Yann Salzmann, Marius Slawik & Annabelle Thuring
ALICE HEADS
Design Research - Ruben Valdez
Research - Lucía Jalon Oyarzun
Techne - Patricia Guaita
Y1 - Laurent Chassot
ALICE Y1 VISITING PROFESSOR
Laïla Seewang
ALICE DIRECTION
Dieter Dietz
EPFL / ENAC / IA / ALICE
ÉTAT DE GENÈVE
OFFICE CANTONAL DE L'AGRICULTURE ET DE LA NATURE (OCAN)
Tiphaine Bussy, cheffe de projet espaces publics, Nouchka Barral, responsable de projet & Olowine Rogg, mandataire coordination parc Rigot
OFFICE DU PATRIMOINE ET DES SITES (OPS)
Babina Chaillot-Calame, Conservatrice cantonale, Nicole Valiquer Grecuccio, Coordinatrice patrimoine, lieux culturels et territoire, Thomas Vidonne, Architecte - conservateur,
OFFICE DES AUTORISATION DE CONSTRUIRE
Roulet Alicia
OFFICE DE L'URBANISME (OU)
Ariane Widmer, urbaniste cantonale & Florent Agat, chef de projet
SERVICES INDUSTRIELS DE GENEVE (SIG)
Martin Hugues, directeur géoréférencement et coordination du territoire, Marc Blumet, direction Smart City - GCT, Daniel Menétrey, logisticien encadrant, Jean-Pierre Morzier, responsable Stocks & Roger Mathyer, responsable transport terrestre
VILLE DE GENEVE
Olivier Miche, direction du patrimoine bâti - architecte chef de projet
MUSÉE INTERNATIONAL DE LA CROIX-ROUGE ET DU CROISSANT ROUGE
Pascal Hufschmid, directeur général, Jonas Chereau, chargé de mission, Anne-Outram Mott, directrice promotion et partenariats, Marie-Laure Berthier, responsable de production, Cecilia Suarez, responsable de communication et de contenus numériques, Julien Clivaz & Nour Khadam, exploitants cafétéria du musée, Marco Domingues, technicien
INSTITUT DES HAUTES ÉTUDES INTERNATIONALES ET DU DÉVELOPPEMENT (IHEID)
Laurence Algarra, directrice de cabinet, Grégoire Mallard, directeur de recherche,, Marc Le Hénant, initiative soutenabilité & Philippe Bergeon, Novae Restauration SA
HOSPICE GÉNÉRAL – CENTRE D'HÉBERGEMENT COLLECTIF DE RIGOT
Nicolas Raballand, Antoine Froidevaux & Daniel Cabello Llamas, Assistants sociaux
BOLLINGER + GROHMANN
Klaas De Rycke, Ingénieur civil & partenaire, Paul Covillault, Ingénieur civil
Juan Orjuela
architecte & artisan pisé
Antoine Cartier
architecte & charpentier
EN-DEHORS
Romain Legros & Arnaud Michelet, associés & Architectes Paysagistes
L'ABARC [Association pour un Baraquement d'Accueil et de Rencontre Communautaire]
Collectif
Association LEAST [laboratoire écologie et art pour une société en transition]
Véronique Ferrero Delacoste, Directrice, Flávio
Viggiani, Etudiant collège Sismondi
ATELIER LA GRANGE
Stéphane Louis, Florent Descouens, Justine Thévoz & Gianni Musio
Simon Deppierraz
Conseils construction métallique
REMUND ET ETHENOZ
Menuisierie
PROTOSHOP SWISS
Flavio Simeoni, conseiller vente
DEBRUNNER ACIFER
Senad Rahimovski, Vente produits techniques
LEUBA HIAG
Brunet Guillaume, Conseiller vente
TLM TRANSPORT
Pierre Muns, directeur
MAKITA
Yan Delacombaz, responsable du marketing
ROUSSILLON FLEURS SARL
Rémy Abbt
GROUPE MUTUEL
Sébastien Rhoner
ANTEQ
Silvio Aymonod, fondateur & directeur
CANPLAST SA, GROUPE G - GOTTBURG SA, HUCK OCCITANIA, IMMOLAC, JAKOB,
KRINNER, MOGENDI FRERES SA, SOREVAL & VEVEY IMAGES
ATAR ROTO PRESSE
Martial MATHIEU, conseiller & Damien Casimiri, chef de projet
LABORATORY OF CONSTRUCTION
MATERIALS (LMC - EPFL)
Karen Scrivener, professeure et directrice, Lionel Sofia, chargé de cours, Jean Dias Rego, technicien & Antonio Costarella, assistant technique
CENTRE D'ENSEIGNEMENT
PROFESSIONNEL DE VEVEY (CEPV)
Léonore Veya, doyenne photographie, Nicolas Savary, maître principal & Mathieu Bernard-Reymond, enseignant
ÉTUDIANT.E.X.S CEPV
Estelle Bouchet, Marie Brocher, Indra Critin, Marvin Estevez-Locatelli, Lucien Giorgis, Maude Gyger, Yohan Nieto, Tessa Racioppi, Nine Sager, Miriam Theus & Romain Violier
HALL BLEUE FRIBOURG
Martin Gonzenbach, director of operations EPFL Fribourg and Smart Living Lab, Claude-Alain Jacot, head of technical unit - EPFL, Stéphane Pilloud, technical specialist - EPFL & Hani Buri, associate professor UAS - HEIA-FR
CRITIQUES INVITÉ.E.X.S Théo Bellman, Raluca Cirstoc, Augustin Clément, Juliette Contat, Paul Covillault, Ophélie Dozat, Hugo Dworzak, Camille Fauvel, Flore Guichot, Steffen Hagele, Johannes Hänggi, Klaas de Rycke, David Klemmer, Capucine Legrand, Ajay Manthripragada, Arnaud Michelet, Ellie Mosayebi, Ludovico Orombelli, Francois Otten, Alessandro Pecci, Pierre Minio Paluello, Philippine Radat & Mikaël Sachs
INTERVENANT.E.X.S INVITE.E.X.S
Tiphaine Abénia, André Bideau, Victor Cano-Ciborro, Kevin Demierre, Léonore Nemec, Lily Ford, Agathe Mignon, Sarah Oppenheimer, Klaas De Rycke & Uri Wegman
CENTRE D'APPUI DE L'ENSEIGNEMENT [CAPE], EPFL
Ingrid Le Duc, conseillère pédagogique & Nihat Kotluk, conseiller pédagogique