Future Urban Climates. Recordings from the Subtropical City of Zurich.
The Project «Future Urban Climates» targets high school classes to communicate scientific and architectural insights related to urban climates. The research content is embedded in the larger context of climate change and the corresponding challenges facing cities that must cope with the negative implications now and in the future. The AGORA project relies on two interconnected research projects carried out over 6 years at the Accademia di architettura in Mendrisio and at ETH Zurich (2015-2019 and 2019-2021). The AGORA project is setting up three laboratories to present and communicate knowledge about urban climates and the critical role of the urban fabric in shaping them. Making invisible phenomena visible is the main concern of the AGORA project developed by the applicants, conceiving urban climates also as the outcome of a city-related material culture. The project will additionally be supported by the expertise of project partners who are experts in various fields of technical and social sciences as well as the arts.
The future urban climate of the city of Zurich is the overarching theme that addresses specific questions about the future transformation of the city based on changing climatic conditions. The subtropical climate assessment is based on the idea of so called “city analogues”2 in which the impacts of climate change were communicated in a representative manner. In an expanded understanding of the nature of scientific research, the project sees the city itself as the experimental locus of the laboratories, purposefully using technical and artistic means to establish dialogue. Discussions are triggered by the creation of unfamiliar or distorted perceptions of urban climate that contradict the everyday experiences and expectations of high school students. Several participatory events are planned around the three laboratories over the course of a year. Provided with the necessary technical devices and guided by the project members and partners, the students will gain insights into what urban climate is, what the constituting forces and elements are, and to what extend the city as well as they themselves will be affected by urban climate in the future. In the frame of these events, the students will collect quantitative and visual data, followed by a consolidation of the project artifacts in the form of cinematographically edited short documentaries. Thus, the AGORA project comprises four interconnected modules promoting a both expert-based and imaginative understanding of future urban climates.
Project partners
ESRI R&D, ETH Design++, Dr. Patricia Jäggi, Kevin B. Lee, Dr. Bruce Yoder, Lukas Truniger, Itamar Bergfreund, Christoph Brünggel.