ETH: Switzerland's driving force
Digitising cultural assets and making them available to the Swiss population is one of the tasks of the library and of ETH Zurich’s 22 collections and archives. A large number of the archives are also of great importance on an international scale. One of them is the archive of the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta).
The biggest architectural archive in Switzerland is located on the Hönggerberg campus and contains plans, photographs, letters and models from 250 eminent architects. It is used above all by researchers, students and media professionals. “Many of our international visitors come here because of Semper,” says Bruno Maurer, who has been in charge of the gta archive for 17 years. Gottfried Semper was one of the most important architects of the 19th century and coincidentally the founder and first professor of the
Bauschule
, which is now the Department of Architecture at ETH. His assets include around 800 plans for our university’s main building.
“ETH’s main building is one of the buildings that characterises Zurich as well as Swiss culture the most,” explains Bruno Maurer. “On the one hand, ETH features prominently in the cityscape, and on the other hand, this building – unlike any other – reflects the importance of education and science for Switzerland. Many see ETH as Switzerland’s driving force and feel a certain sense of pride.”
ETH designs Switzerland
The people of Basel are also proud of their St. Antonius Church. It is considered one of the major works of Swiss architecture and was built by ETH graduate – and later ETH professor – Karl Moser. The three architects of the Swiss National Museum and the team that designed Prime Tower also studied at our university and later returned to ETH as professors. Some of their initial blueprints are housed in the gta archive. The archive is also home to historic spatial and landscape planning documents.
In fact, ETH has played a decisive role in Swiss spatial and infrastructure planning. Partly because spatial planners are only trained here and partly “because ETH researchers work closely with our graduates in regional and cantonal planning offices, illustrating possible future scenarios and collaborating on solutions for future problems,” says Bernd Scholl, Professor at the Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development.
Scholl himself completed his postgraduate studies in spatial planning at ETH Zurich at the beginning of the eighties. For 12 years he has been managing the continuing education programmes in spatial planning at our university. “The Swiss are finally implementing what we have been teaching for a long time at ETH,” says the 64-year-old, referring to the basic planning principle that internal development precedes external development. The Swiss population voted to adopt this principle in 2013 with the revision of the Federal Spatial Planning Act. This helps to increase the residential density of existing settlements and, for example, to reuse abandoned industrial sites instead of building new ones on greenfield sites. Preventing urban sprawl protects recreational and agricultural areas and avoids higher energy consumption.
