ESCH SINTZEL ARCHITEKTEN - Converting a warehouse into a collective residential building

School lecture series at EPFL Architecture
Tuesday 16 December 2024
EPFL, Archizoom

This lecture is part of the lecture series "Affordable Housing: Six Exemplary Projects"

As a residential building, the former warehouse is actually entering its third life. It is prototypical not only because of the reuse of existing building structure, but also because of the communal programming.

The inquiries addressed by Esch Sintzel revolve around the creation of places. «Place» is space that is experienced – assimilated, laden with significance and bound to time. Therefore it is no coincidence that housing constitutes one of the main focuses of Esch Sintzel’s work in that no other architectural undertaking intervenes more directly in life – in the life of the city, of the community, of the individual.

00:00 Introduction by Pier Vittorio Aureli
03:37 Lecture by Philipp Esch
57:02 Q&A
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"Affordable Housing: Six Exemplary Projects"

For the Fall 2024 Lecture Series, the School of Architecture at EPFL has gathered six housing projects that address affordable housing in an exemplary way. Each guest will present one project and explain in detail what it means to produce good and affordable housing from commission to inhabitation. The aim of these lectures is to not stare too romantically at affordable housing, but rather to show how building affordable housing is both difficult and possible. The lecture series will be inaugurated by philosopher Emanuele Coccia - author of the acclaimed book The Philosophy of Home - who will introduce the house as a place where to imagine new and unprecedented communities that can challenge the way in which we build and inhabit housing today.

In the last decade, housing is back in the architects’ agenda. Yet, renewed interest in housing corresponds to a historical moment in which, more than ever, housing is considered a commodity to be bought, sold and rented rather than a space to inhabit. While in the hey-day of the welfare state, legions of architects – often employed by the state – had the chance to develop large-scale housing complexes, and to experiment with unprecedented possibilities in terms of typology and technology, today affordable housing is reduced to few interventions in a desolate sea of commodified urbanization. Yet, in spite of these hostile conditions, some recent housing projects have managed to reformulate what affordable housing can be in the 21th century. Although these projects do not match (yet) the scale and quantity of their 20th century predecessors, they are innovative especially in terms of how people can live together more collectively and by allowing new types of households.