DEMOLITION AS AN EXCEPTION?
LECTURE BY THE COLLECTIVE COUNTDOWN 2030
Monday 10 October 2022, 12:15 p.m.
Archizoom, Foyer SG, Place Ada Lovelace, EPFL
On the occasion of the exhibition Ultimate Matter, Friederike Kluge and Rahel Dürmüller, co-founding members of the collective Countdown 2030, will present their research and actions regarding the demolition of buildings in Switzerland.
Indeed, in Switzerland, over 500 kilograms of construction waste are produced every second through the demolition of buildings. The building industry is thus responsible for 84% of waste in the country. Landfills are filling up faster than new sites can be found. The current swiss measures are not enough to achieve the goals of the Paris climate accords. The solution for this problem consists in preserving, rebuilding, and repurposing existing buildings. Demolitions of buildings and their replacement with new constructions should, whenever possible, be avoided and can no longer be considered the first and most obvious option.
In this context Countdown 2030 curated the current exposition at the swiss architecture museum in Basel “Die Schweiz: Ein Abriss” (La Suisse: Une Démolition). To get the discussion on this issue, the group has published the Demolition Atlas, which documents demolition buildings throughout Switzerland.
Biographies
Rahel Dürmüller is an architect MSc EPFL that works in the office Standke Architekten in Basel. Since the beginning of 2021 she has been an active member of Countdown 2030, a collective that advocates a change in architecture in times of the climate and biodiversity crisis. She was one of the curators of the current exhibition “Die Schweiz: Ein Abriss” at the Swiss architecture museum SAM in Basel. Furthermore, Rahel Dürmüller is a founding member of the collective Affluent that does actions and research about the co-construction of resilient, hospital and inclusive territories through architectural, landscape and urban drawings.
Friederike Kluge is an architect Dipl.-Ing. SIA FAS that worked and studied in Germany, Canada, Chile and Switzerland. Since 2013, she has been running the architectural practice Alma Maki Architekten in Basel with Meik Rehrmann that won the swiss foundation award in 2018. Friederike Kluge worked as an assistant and as a lecturer at ETH Zurich, was Professor of Building Construction and Design at HTWG Konstanz, and holds recently a Professorship of Analysis, Design and Construction at FHNW Muttenz. She is a founding member of Countdown 2030.
