EXFORMA explores the concepts of reuse, repurposing, and recycling. These processes serve as methods for reclaiming waste, challenging established production methods, and combating obsolescence by giving components and materials a second life. At the same time, they enable a new reading of the environments in which we live.

EXFORMA invites to collectively reflect on how we can combine these circular strategies with more ambitious cultural goals that are firmly rooted in the history of architecture. By aligning them with diverse notions like ready-made, as-found, objet-trouvé, copy, sample, appropriation or decontextualization, these ecologically sustainable processes resonate with other contemporary cultural practices. At the same time, they also reflect on the fusion between production and consumption.

When all that will be used is what is already there, finding becomes a key task. The selection of these findings forces the architect to operate also as a curator. And the result of this selection becomes the narrative of materials that are appropriate, selected and locally available only at that exact moment. First comes the hunt and then the construction.  

The semester will begin with the construction of a 1:1 junction using scavenged parts, challenging us to shift how we perceive and read the city. From this starting point, students will analyse Swiss infrastructure, investigating where new reservoirs of building material might lie hidden in plain sight. Through these findings and 3D scans, the students will create a digital component catalogue that will serve as the starting point for their projects. The choice of the construction materials is the founding principle of the design process.

Through hands-on prototyping, 3D scanning, and the use of AI as an iterative design tool, we will explore new futures for materials otherwise destined for a linear lifecycle.

A series of workshops and conversations with artists, material and AI specialists, researchers, and engineers will introduce key concepts in circularity, construction, and ready-made design. Together, we will uncover new possibilities, and use architecture as a means to reimagine waste as a source of potential.

HS 2025, ETH Zürich, Studio PARABASE

Introduction: 16th September 2025, 9am
Location: HIL

Intermediate review: 7th October, 11th November
Final review: 16th December

Groupwork only
Anticipated spend per student: 150 CHF
Teaching Language: English
Course number: 052-1143-25L

Teaching Team: Carla Ferrando Costansa, Pablo Garrido Arnaiz, Loïc Cao, Francesca Leibowitz

• Understand circular design principles (reuse, repurposing, recycling) and apply them in architectural practice.
• Recognise reuse not only as a sustainability strategy but also its usage or relevance in other contemporary cultural expressions.
• Gain awareness of material streams in the built environment and their ecological implications.
• Gain hands-on experience in constructing 1:1 prototypes using scavenged parts.
• Explore unconventional material junctions and experiment with physical assemblies.
• Understand the technical and aesthetic challenges of building with non-standard, second-life components.
• Acquire skills in 3D scanning and digital modeling of found components.
• Experiment with AI as a generative and iterative design tool, integrating machine intelligence into architectural workflows.
• Develop the ability to critically analyze the intersection of architecture, production, and consumption, merging cultural ambition with ecological responsibility.
• Situate design work within contemporary debates on sustainability, obsolescence, and cultural practice.
• Work collectively to build shared knowledge bases and engage with external experts (artists, material specialists, engineers, researchers) to broaden perspectives.
• Practice communication, negotiation, and collaboration in group settings.

Waste ultimately reveals how industrial production processes work, from both an economic and a social point of view. When all that will be used is already there, finding becomes a key task. First comes the hunt, then the construction. 

This condition not only changes the usual design process but also alters our view of the built environment and questions how we assign value to things. The act of designing will begin by directly engaging with specific materials or components at full scale. 

If we want to reuse components, we first have to learn how to assemble them. And in order to connect heterogenous elements not originally meant to fit together, we need to work not only conceptually but also technically on the joint. The notion of originality and even of creation will slowly blur while working in an almost analogous manner to a programmer, a DJ or a curator, selecting objects and putting them together in a new context.

The semester will begin with looking at the city with new eyes. We will meander through Zurich scavenging materials and components that we will later use to build. Using a minimum of three as-found objects, each group will be assigned an overarching theme, which should influence and dictate their joint. This exercise should be creative, ingenious, experimental, and convincing. The fragment should not only explore the in-between and the fixing, but also represent a potential architectural detail - a piece of wall, floor or hinge? We want students to be open-minded, to push the limits, explore the possibilities of each material and what this joint could be. Think unconventionally, have fun!

Running alongside this, each group will choose an infrastructural sector which will act as the focal point of their design throughout the semester. Choosing from: agriculture, communication, construction, energy, leisure, security, transportation, underground, water - as a starting point, each group will analyse linear processes, be it material production, waste streams or component life cycles, to find where an intervention could make these systems circular. 

Students will interrogate these systems in order to develop a narrative and formulate a position on these topics. Through their research they will determine ways to repurpose elements and make them suitable for construction. By 3D scanning and modelling these components, students will compile a catalogue of parts which will form the basis of their building design. Each group will determine their project location and programme in accordance to their story. The 1:1 fragment and the research on infrastructure will be presented together in the first review. 

• 1:1 joint with scavenged material
• Analysis of industrial sector
• 3D scanned catalogue of parts
• Research of project programme and site 

Tuesday 16th September:

10.00—12.30: studio and chapter 1 introduction
13.30—14.30: tour of material library
14.30—17.15: material scavenging 

Wednesday 17th September:

11.00—12.00: PARABASE talk
13.00—18.00: tutorials
18.00: studio apero

Tuesday 23rd September:

10.00—11.00: presentation by Guillermo Santomà
11.00—18.00: tutorials with Guillermo Santomà

Wednesday 24th September:

13.30—15.30: introduction to 3D scanning with Beril Önalan and Ioanna Mitripoulou

Tuesday 30th September:

10.00—11.00: tutorials
11.00—12.00: building physics with Illias Hischier and Samuel Kummer
13.00—18.00: tutorials

Wednesday 1st October:

10.00—12.00: talk from Thorben Gröbel
13.00—18.00: tutorials

Tuesday 7th October:

9.00—18.00: review 1
18.00: apero

Once a narrative, programme and site have been established, we will start to experiment with the compiled 3D material catalogue. We will introduce AI tools to assist us with the design of our projects, using iterative component compositions to work out new structural systems with our gathered pieces. Students will learn how to use this technology by exploring its limits and again, we will profit from its periphery: the error. 

We believe that creativity consists of intuitively taking advantage of mistakes for our own benefit, in using what lies in the margins, the noise, the anomaly. In this constant shift between the digital and the physical we wish for one reality to inform the other and vice versa. By testing, transforming, assembling these materials, and exploring their limits we seek to reveal their hidden properties.

In order to better understand the act of building, we will hear from practitioners across the whole construction process to acquire knowledge about craft and building techniques. We strongly believe that the capacity to understand materials and construction is crucial to designing meaningful architecture. Students should source material samples and make tests to understand their weight, properties and potential.

Throughout this phase, each group will develop a structural system which will later be translated and detailed into a building. The systems, material tests and initial drawing set will be presented at the second review.

• 3D catalogue compositions (AI)
• Material Tests
• Rendered structural system
• Initial drawing set

Wednesday 8th October:

10.00—12.00: talk from Santiago Espitia
13.30—17.00: metalworking workshop at Stahl und Traum

Tuesday 14th October:

10.00—12.00: tutorials
13.00—17.00: AI imaging with Olivier Campagne

Wednesday 15th October:

10.00—12.00: tutorials
13.00—17.00: AI imaging with Olivier Campagne

Tuesday 21st October:

Seminar week: no tutorials

Wednesday 22nd October:

Seminar week: no tutorials

Tuesday 28th October:

10.00—18.00: tutorials

Wednesday 29th October:

10.00—18.00: tutorials with Mario Monotti

Tuesday 4th November:

10.00—11.00: tutorials
11.00—12.00: talk from Vanessa Schwarzkopf
13.00—18.00: tutorials

Wednesday 5th November:

10.00—18.00: tutorials with BUK (Margit Pschorn and Cristiano Aires Teixeira)

Tuesday 11th November:

9.00—18.00: review 2
18.00: apero

The final chapter will focus on design detailing, and ensuring that each project has a circular strategy that helps to reduce CO2 emissions. In a non-dogmatic way, CO2 calculation tools and methodologies will be introduced by researchers and experts in this field. These calculations should be used to argue and support design choices.

We will not only analyse the embodied carbon of our projects but we will also challenge the energetic demand of our designs. This way, we aim to question preconceived ideas of standards, norms and what we understand as comfort.

By the end of the semester, we will bring our projects back to the physical realm. To do so, we will use augmented reality tools in order to present our projects at a 1:1 scale and with tangible contexts.

Inserting objects into new contexts helps us to break with the modernist ideology, the question is no longer: what new thing can be done? But rather: what can be done with what we already have? How can we create meaning from that chaotic mass of objects that constitute our environment? As Kenneth Goldsmith puts it: context is the new content.

• Drawing set
• Comparative data/LCA/diagrams
• Video explaining project
• AR 1:1/1:5 mock up

Wednesday 12th November:

10.00—18.00: visit to Basel

Tuesday 18th November:

10.00—18.00: tutorials 

Wednesday 19th November:

10.00—18.00: tutorials with Pierre Navaro-Aubertin

Tuesday 25th November:

10.00—18.00: tutorials

Wednesday 26th November:

10.00—12.00: videomaking with Anton Krebs
13.00—18.00: tutorials

Tuesday 2nd December:

10.00—18.00: tutorials

Wednesday 3rd December:

11.00—12.00: artist’s talk
13.00—15.00: AR with Gereon Sièvi

Tuesday 9th December:

10.00—18.00: tutorials

Wednesday 10th December:

10.00—18.00: tutorials

Tuesday 16th December:

9.00—18.00: final review
18.00: apero

Wednesday 17th December:

10.00—13.00: studio tidy and feedback