MAS UD – Master of Advanced Studies in Urban Design (ETHZ)
Africa, the alleged “dark continent,” and its patterns of urbanization processes are the focus of a design research program entitled Urban Transformation in Developing Territories and coordinated by the Chair of Marc Angélil at the ETH Zurich. Using Ethiopia, one of the world’s poorest nations, and its capital Addis Ababa as a case study, a form of projective investigation is promoted combining analysis, design, and implementation strategies—an inquiry directed toward practical performance.
Central to this undertaking are the transdisciplinary disposition of the work and the involvement of local stakeholders. A network of collaborators—including students, members of the academic community, professionals, governmental agencies, industry partners, and representatives of the public at large—frames the dialogue and negotiations pertaining to potential conversions of the built environment. These transformations are guided by the mandate to promote means for achieving socially, ecologically, and economically balanced urban settlements.
The 3-year project is structured according to three phases of investigation, each demarcated by specific methods and understandings of design research. Learning from Addis (2007) builds on Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s analysis of Las Vegas using mapping techniques as design tools to delineate both re-readings and re-writings of Addis Ababa’s social and physical spaces. Addis Through the Looking-Glass (2008) explores, as in Lewis Carroll’s Alice adventures, the possibilities of viewing the world from another vantage point, through the mirror so to speak, to test design propositions as prototypical urban strategies in the different cultural contexts of Ethiopia and Switzerland. Quo Vadis, Addis? (2009) seeks, with a nod to Henryk Sienkiewicz’s political novel, to generate design projects for implementation at the local level—countering prevalent tendencies to engulf Ethiopia in the global economic game.
MARC ANGELIL is Professor at the Department of Architecture of the ETH Zurich. His research at the Institute of Urban Design, part of the competence center Network City and Landscape (NSL), addresses recent developments at the periphery of large metropolitan regions. He is the author of several books, including Inchoate: An Experiment in Architectural Education, on methods of teaching, and Indizien, on the political economy of contemporary urban territories.
He received his architectural degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology where he also completed his doctoral dissertation. He then taught at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and subsequently at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
He practices architecture with his partners, Sarah Graham, Reto Pfenninger, Manuel Scholl, and Hanspeter Oester as agps.architecture, an architectural cooperative with offices in Los Angeles and Zurich. Their built projects include the new Midfield Terminal at Zurich airport, the Esslingen town center and light-rail station, as well as the remodelling of a factory for housing and commercial uses. Current projects include the headquarters extension of The World Conservation Union (IUCN) in Gland-Geneva, the Children’s Museum of Los Angeles (CMLA), an infrastructure project for an aerial tram in Portland, Oregon, the Zurich International School, and sports facilities for adidas in Herzogenaurach, Germany. Their work has been included in exhibitions and publications in Argentina, Australia, China, England, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the United States, and Switzerland.
Marc Angélil is a board member of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction.