Research

Diversity of Challenges

Many of the challenges society faces today, such as global warming, migration and housing shortages are intertwined with the built environment. Housing is fundamental to the well-being of humans. Urban and landscape design shape the way they live and work together. Inevitably, buildings consume much of the available energy, material and space. These challenges force us to reflect on how cutting-edge research in building technology – largely driven by concerns of sustainability, efficiency and resource management – relates to the inherently inductive and open-ended nature of architectural design, and on the cultural dimension of architecture, embodied in its history and reflected in architectural discourse.

Within the Department of Architecture, research activities range from sets of discreet individual projects to much larger national and international research programmes. There are small-scale collaborations between Professors, Institutes and other Departments of ETH. Furthermore, the Department is successful in acquiring large-scale research projects funded by Swiss, European and worldwide funding agencies.