052-1123-24L Architectural Design V-IX: At the End of the World: Museums (M.Issoufou)
| Semester | Autumn Semester 2024 |
| Lecturers | M. Issoufou Mahamadou |
| Periodicity | every semester recurring course |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Comment | Please register (www.mystudies.ethz.ch) only after the internal enrolment for the design classes (see http://www.einschreibung.arch.ethz.ch/design.php. Project grading at semester end is based on the list of enrolments on 30.10.2024 (valuation date) only. This is the ultimate deadline to unsubscribe or enroll for the studio. |
Courses
| Number | Title | Hours | Lecturers | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 052-1123-24 U | Architectural Design V-IX: At the End of the World: Museums (M.Issoufou)
 Permission from lecturers required for all students.
Keine Lehrveranstaltung am 22/23.10.2024 (Seminarwoche). | 16 hrs |
| M. Issoufou Mahamadou |
Catalogue data
| Abstract | This semester we will continue questioning Museums as institutions, buildings and practices. Our focus will shift to Neuchâtel, a city with colonial history, and work on the Musée d’Ethnographie. We will deepen our research on the Museum’s ecology, imagine new programs and reshape the role of the institution through an architectural intervention, in a future with no objects to display. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | The Studio's mission aims for a "Decolonization from/of the Global Minority" by breaking down the inherent superiority complex and repositioning the institution and context in which we work, in order to better situate our perception within a long, entangled and multilayered understanding of our place in the world. Through research and architectural design, we aim to contribute to a "Decolonization from/of the Global Majority" by taking steps to acknowledge the dispossession of knowledge and create thresholds toward their restitutions. By questioning the Ethnographic Museum as an Institution we aim to practice a decolonization of knowledge, and of the architectural practice mindset. We rely on the notion of intersectional sustainability, which requires decolonizing processes, materials, labor, and practices within global mechanisms of architectural production. The objective is to develop projects that move away from politics of exploitation and imagine positive contributions. Museums are places where the relationship between individual and collective memory emerges in the process of functionalizing cultural memory in memory institutions. Through the 19th and 20th centuries, Museums have been active agents of colonization and dispossession. They contain artifacts from all over the world, and many from formerly colonized lands. Many objects from their collection do possess violent pasts, and are today raising public awareness. Effectively, these objects' histories can no longer be neutralized through scenographies and institutional politics. Western Museums around the globe are under pressure, and their politics, practices and spaces are urged to be redesigned to propose non-colonial and non-imperial relations to the objects. What would that process look like? What are the implications for the museum and its collections? Are the objects museums' actual raison d'être? Does the urgency of repatriation/rematriation imply that museums must be entirely redesigned? Are there ways we can envisage culture without consuming it in its current exploitative form? We will address sustainability and heritage within institutional and architectural practices. Through research and design, we will navigate and propose provisional and situated answers to the following problematics: How can we denaturalize the uneven access to objects and knowledge? How do we deal with these objects and their violent histories if they are not rematriated/repatriated, and which traces to keep of them when they are restituted? What spaces, uses, needs, and practices emerge from these politics, ethics and reparations? How do we think of spaces for restitution, repair, and what is beyond repair? The return of ill-acquired objects will eventually be inevitable as evident from the current turmoil surrounding the question. Imagining what it would mean allows us to be armed with positive solutions for something new and engaging rather than allowing fear to maintain us on the wrong side of history. As we imagine a world several years in the future where Museums no longer own these objects in their collections, it begs the question: What are the futurities of museums at the End of the World? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | The studio focuses on reimagining the role of the Musée d’Ethnographie de Neuchâtel within its urban context, considering Neuchâtel's colonial history. In groups we will engage in a research phase to study historical, cultural, economical and social contexts, as well as developing a deep understanding for the existing architectures and ecologies of the site and the city. The aim of our research is to generate collective knowledge and share it in the studio through the design of an exhibition that will serve as a base for the architectural transformation of the Museum. During the design phase, working in pairs, we will create architectural scenarios to redefine the role of the Museum when the collections of objects will no longer be their main reason of being. We will craft alternative programs and develop architectural concepts by investigating the relationships between the museum's existing buildings and garden and the new content, uses and users. Taking into account all forms of sustainability, we will design architectural interventions for the existing structures, transforming their spaces for the Museum at the End of the World. Throughout the semester our program will be enriched with a site visit, guest lectures, inputs and collective readings to deepen and discuss our knowledge on the anchor, as well as decolonial and architectural practices. Imagining architecture, institutions, and our societies “at the end of the World,” proposes to follow Denise Ferreira da Silva at the end of this World, as to refer to worlds in which we work collectively toward the dismantlement and transformation of the world system which perpetuates inequalities, racism and colonial legacies. Imagining at the end of the World also invites us in an epistemological rupture with Eurocentrism, acknowledging, listening to and working with alternative ways of conceiving, designing and experiencing. Imagining at the end of the World goes beyond linear and colonial conceptions of time and history, rejecting the idea that non-imperial and non-colonial ways of thinking and doing never existed, making kin with pasts, presents and futurities. Imagining at the end of the World means standing in solidarity and dismantling together oppressive systems. Imagining at the end of the World urges us to re-evaluate and transform our societies’ relation to nature, land and people in times of environmental collapse. Imagining at the end of the World is answering to Mark Fischer’s “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” by engaging in imagining at the end of this World, not as a distant desired utopia, but as an actual practice of collective emancipation. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lecture notes | Semester, theoretical and case studies readers delivered as PDFs at the semester start. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | Work in groups in the research phase. Work in pairs in the design phase. Introduction: 17/09/2024, 10:00 HIL C15 Site visit in Neuchâtel: 24/09/2024 Intermediate reviews: 08/10/2024, 12/11/2024 Final review: 18/12/2024 Estimated semester costs: up to CHF 50.-- per student. Print of the readers on demand. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Competencies |
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Performance assessment
| Performance assessment information (valid until the course unit is held again) | |
Performance assessment as a semester course | |
| ECTS credits | 14 credits |
| Examiners | M. Issoufou Mahamadou |
| Type | graded semester performance |
| Language of examination | English |
| Repetition | Repetition only possible after re-enrolling for the course unit. |
| Additional information on mode of examination | Letzter Abmeldetermin für das Entwurfssemester ist der 30.10.2024, 24:00 Uhr. Das Löschen einer Belegung nach diesem Datum ist nicht zulässig. |
Learning materials
| Main link | Studio Boltshauser |
| Only public learning materials are listed. | |
Groups
| No information on groups available. |
Restrictions
| General |  : Special students and auditors need a special permission from the lecturersPermission from lecturers required for all students |
Offered in
| Programme | Section | Type | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture Bachelor | Architectural Design (from 5. Semester on) | W | |