D-ARCH Research Day: Ecological Turn in Architecture

The inaugural D-ARCH Research Day will publicly present, share, and re-evaluate the topics and methods of architectural research at our department.

The theme of this year’s conference is the Ecological Turn in Architecture.

The urgency of the climate catastrophe is putting enormous pressure on the discipline. Building and housing account for a large share of global CO2 emissions: 38 percent to be exact. We ask how can we design and build in the future to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement? Our field is currently undergoing a fundamental shift that challenges the discipline, as well as its working conditions, economics, use of resources including land and soil, and architects’ claims to authorship and authority. Clearly, we need to rethink how we want to realize living spaces for humans and non-humans alike. In this process, much is at stake: architectural culture in its entirety.
Architects have always shown themselves capable of responding to new problems. We ask how architecture will change, and what technical challenges, use cases and aesthetics in the broadest sense might emerge from the ecological turn. Together we will explore four sets of issues from different disciplinary perspectives: aesthetic, constructive, territorial, and social ecologies. Researchers and designers from all institutes are invited to present and discuss selected case studies. An exhibition with poster presentations by PhD students will provide insight into the department’s multifaceted research culture.