Studio Foundations (2025-)
Studio Foundations is the new interdisciplinary first-year course in the Bachelor of Architecture program at ETH Zurich. Eight professorships from different disciplines jointly teach the fundamentals of architectural design as an integrative process in which design, technical, historical, and ecological questions are considered together from the very beginning. The aim is to gradually introduce students to the complexity of architecture and to strengthen their ability to translate different perspectives into a coherent design.
Within this shared framework, the Energy & Climate discipline understands architecture as an active dialogue between people, space, and the environment. Buildings influence human well-being, respond to climatic conditions, make use of local resources, and simultaneously create their own microclimatic situations. Through lectures, tool-based inputs, and exercises integrated into the design process, we teach how these interactions can be observed, understood, and used creatively.
Through their own measurements and personal evaluations of the local climate at the respective building sites, students develop an understanding of abstract values and data. Measurements, analyses, and visualizations make climate parameters directly tangible and sharpen awareness of how climatic conditions vary spatially and can be shaped.
A central didactic tool is the concept of climate patterns: a design vocabulary that makes climatic relationships accessible in the first year and supports the integration of climate-relevant decisions early in the design process.
At the core is a critical understanding of human comfort that goes beyond standard values. Different climatic conditions are understood as spatial and atmospheric qualities that can synergistically shape architecture.
In Studio Foundations, Energy & Climate is therefore not taught as isolated specialist knowledge but is integrated into the design process from the very beginning.
Team: Prof. Dr. Arno Schlueter, Dr. Illias Hischier, Lukas Nussbaumer, Marvin Bienz