Elective course Fall Semester 2023
In the Fall Semester 2023, the elective “Repair: Keep in Place” will take place as part of a pilot teaching project with regard to the upcoming curiculum revision.
The Innovedum Project “Maintanence and Repair ON SITE” (link) integrates the teaching of preservation, construction and sustainability with architectural design. The elective course “Repair: Keep in Place” is aligned with a design studio on building within the existing context and an on-site design-build seminar week, to offer a semester focusing on repair and maintenance in architecture.
Difficult to maintain constructions and industrial manufacturing processes decrease the lifespan of objects not only in product design but also in architecture. Repairability is becoming less of a concern – replacement seems to be the norm. We need to rethink the way we build, starting already with the planning phase.
In this course, we combine traditional topics of preservation with concepts of repair to raise awareness for sustainable thinking and action. Students will learn both traditional and digital methods as well as the basic building and material criteria for repair. The objective is not only the hands-on repair within the built environment but especially to learn about the concepts of heritage preservation.
For the current semester, the repair concepts from the elective course are being carried out on site as part of the Design-Build seminar week at the Schatzalp in Davos.
The Hotel Schatzalp is characterised by continuous transformation, through redesign, as well as maintenance and servicing work. Changing uses as well as owners and the associated changing needs offer a complex starting point for the repair measures to be worked out and carried out.
In the elective course, students will develop various repair concepts for selected objects and situations in advance. In groups, they will carry out the repair under expert guidance. The implemented measures will be subsequently processed and reflected upon in collaboration with the design chair of Tom Emerson.