Science City ETH Zürich
With the “Science City” project, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) is planning a high-tech campus that will also function as an urban center for think culture. Science City will be a platform for ETH Zurich to even further expand its position as a top international university in the coming years. Since its foundation 150 years ago, ETH Zurich has been Switzerland’s elite university for engineering and sciences.
The exhibition at AedesBerlin demonstrates the role ETH plays in Switzerland and provides an insight into the process of creating Science City.
Science City is the vision of an university campus and an urban center for think culture as well as a project for university and urban development. Today ETH Zurich has two campuses: ETH Zentrum in the heart of the city, close to the main train station, and the one at Hönggerberg, approximately 12 km northwest of the center.
The central campus is visually defined by the striking main building from the period of ETH’s founding. The blueprints for the structure were designed by Gottfried Semper, a professor at ETH from 1855 to 1871. In 1970, a shortage of space led to the creation of the second ETH location at Hönggerberg. Over the last thirty years, ETH has systematically expanded its Hönggerberg campus to become a center of research and learning with state-of-the-art infrastructure. ETH Zentrum and Hönggerberg are linked physically with a shuttle bus system and virtually through an electronic communications network.
Science City – the campus
With its utilitarian academic buildings, laboratories and lecture halls, ETH Hönggerberg currently presents itself as a straightforward think-tank. Yet this picture will change in the coming years. The Hönggerberg location is to be turned into a high-tech campus. Alongside buildings for research and instruction, the complex will contain student residences, a new sports facility and a guesthouse as well as a shopping mall and restaurants. A learning and congress center with an auditorium, a modern library as well as event and exhibition halls will constitute a striking architectural landmark. With its outstanding research facilities and attractive living, working and housing conditions, Science City is intended to attract young talented scientists from around the world to its campus.
Science City – the urban center for thinking culture
Yet Science City is not merely an academic ghetto. Science City will function as a lively center for think culture, a forum where the realm of science and the general public can come together and enter into dialogue. Sports facilities, restaurants and park areas, events, exhibitions and educational offerings as well as opportunities to meet researchers from around the world give Science City a special charisma. For local residents, Science City is a place to visit and enjoy, taking advantage of all it has to offer. Science City is thus meant to serve as an interface between science and society.
Science City – a group effort
Science City is being developed in partnership with stakeholders from both within ETH and the outside community. It involves close collaboration among lecturers, students, employees and area residents, the city and the canton of Zurich, the Swiss Federal Government as well as interested companies, investors and donors. The partnership concept ensures that the opinions, ideas and experiences of all those linked to Science City are incorporated into the development of the project. A master plan will be put together by September 2004, with the actual realization of Science City set for 2010.
Science City – a part of ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich was established in 1855 as the Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute. A “child” of the modern Swiss state, the institution played a key role for the nation in all the technical revolutions of the last 150 years, from railroad, bridge and tunnel construction to the utilization of electricity up to modern life sciences and information technology. Twenty-one Nobel Prize winners hail from ETH Zurich. Today, ETH Zurich is a center of studies and research and a workplace for more than 18,000 people from 80 nations.
Speakers: Kristin Feireiss, Aedes Berlin
Prof. Gerhard Schmitt, Vice President for Planning and Logistics, ETH Zurich
Michael Rotondi, Architect, Los Angeles
