Chair of
Architectural Behaviorology

“Zukunft bauen” – “Business Behaviorology at SQUARE”

September 2023 – February 16th 2024

Last semester, HSG business students and ETH architecture students ran research on the SQUARE university building as part of two courses. The focus was on various questions: What is happening in this building? What does the users’ everyday life look like and to what extent does the Square meet all the high expectations that are placed on it? The results of the research were transcribed in architectural ethnographic drawings by ETH students.

 

 

 

Based on this field research, the students developed design proposals for two interventions in the building in February. The interventions are intended to promote new behaviors at SQUARE, make ingrained behaviors visible, and allow the users of the building to appropriate the place and intervene in what is happening.

The interventions were implemented as 1:1 mock-ups. For this purpose, primarily recycled materials were used. During 5 days in February, a workshop was set up on-site at SQUARE, in the Discovery Grid, to build the interventions. For a week, ETH architecture students built the interventions, with some support from an HSG student, or neighbors. The teams sawed, drilled, screwed, and brought together various materials. During the realization process, students exchanged ideas at a meeting with the architect Sou Fujimoto or with donors. Finally, the students opened the two interventions “Squares in the Square” and “Spinnrad” with a celebration in front of the building. With support from the neighborhood, they set up a kitchen, cooked minestrone, and invited everyone to eat together. The 1:1 prototypes can now be tested on-site by users.

Organization:

Research collective Unexplored Realities, Seminar für Soziologie, University of St.Gallen, Dr. Niklaus Reichle, Craft and material: Andrea Rüeger

Chair of Architectural Behaviorology, IEA, D-ARCH, ETH Zürich. Prof. Momoyo Kaijima, Assistant: Grégoire Farquet

The project was supported by a D-ARCH Enabling Grant and the Intendanz of Square.

ETH Students, Research support, design, and implementation 1:1

Isabel Ammann, Léon Bührer, Tiffanie Genilloud, Laura Kölliker, Yosuke Nakamoto, Amanda Pellizzari, Matthias Bisig, Ali El Mawla, Daniel Kunz, Charlotte Thallinger und Quingyuan Wu erstellt.

HSG Students, Empirical research, support of the conceptualization phase

Aron Baumgartner, Alexander Bertignol, Maximilian Breitruck, Dan Büeler, Enzo Cerminara, Louis Felber, Alina Felder, Rahel Felder, Aurelia Fischer, Yannick Fraser, Eric Haas, Simon Hoffmann, Christian Bernard Mathieu, Ben Meyer, Lukas Nick, Angela Perriard, Dominic Vomsattel, Florianne Walliser, Alain Weber

Photo credits: Grégoire Farquet, Niklaus Reichle, Andrea Rüeger