Architectural Papers:BIG Scale Grossform

ETH Zürich According to natural scientific logics, the size of creatures in nature is strictly linked to their form. A fly for example possesses a form that can absolutely not be increased. Should this still occur, the hence emerging monster would collapse, because his supporting elements, although proportionally increased, would not be capable of carrying the overweight. If we consider architecture as a phenomenon that follows the laws of the physical world, size and scale appear as initial conditions, under which architecture has to be pondered. This volume of Architectural Papers gathers a series of data, arguments and projects produced at our chair surrounding this theme. It hence represents material that was collected during this process of learning, although it aspires to reach a wider public. To teach (and to learn) architecture is not only about transferring knowledge but, in my opinion, primarily about producing knowledge. The large dimension of the transformations in our built environment that globalization has pandered represents a new methodological paradigm the project has to be confronted with. Here some questions related to planning will be treated, defending its role more as a structural one and less as a formalizing one, with the autonomous presence (although interrelated) of singular objects, which in our times appear recharged with great responsibility and which can no longer be based on already assumed continuities as maybe they could have in former times. A substantial part of this volume is composed of reflections regarding the European high building, as a new type more and more present in our everyday reality. To teach and to produce architecture means to participate in a wide dialogue, in which multiple voices, references, interlocutors have to interrelate. This book attempts to condensate a moment of this intellectual construction.