Скачать или смотреть BHSF - Güterstrasse 8, Berne

School Lecture Series at EPFL Architecture
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
EPFL Auditorium SG

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

The transformation of the former warehouse of the Tobler Chocolate Factory is the geometrical and conceptual centre of the urban design for the site of the former waste incineration plant in the Holligen neighbourhood in Berne. The fundamental decision to preserve and convert this building represents an elementary approach to save resources while creating a new identity from the existing within the urban and architectural scale.

Axel Humpert studied architecture at TU Graz and ETH Zurich. He graduated in architecture in 2004 and then worked for Meili, Peter Architekten in Zurich and Munich. Together with Benedikt Boucsein and Tim Seidel, he founded the architecture magazine ‘Camenzind’ in 2005 and his own office, BHSF Architekten, in 2007; initially in Zurich and the Munich branch in 2022. From 2007 to 2010 he was a design assistant at ETH Zurich. Since 2015, he has held the professorship for Architecture and Construction at the Institute of Architecture at the FHNW Muttenz together with Tim Seidel. Both have headed the Institute since 2022. He has been on the board of the Swiss Architecture Council since 2023 and a member of the City of Thun's specialist committee for building and exterior design since 2024.

00:00:00 Introduction by Pier Vittorio Aureli
00:06:29 Lecture by Axel Humpert
00:55:38 Q&A
_
Housing Vol.2.
"Housing and Reuse: Six Exemplary Projects"

For the Spring 2025 Lecture Series, the School of Architecture at EPFL has invited six architecture offices to discuss housing and reuse through six exemplary projects. The lecture series will be complemented by the launch of Professor Charlotte Malterre-Barthes’s “A Moratorium on New Construction”.

Reuse of existing buildings is increasingly becoming a good practice. Yet, reuse is easier said than done. Within a capitalist society, buildings are produced as commodities and, as such, they are not meant to last. Moreover, what is at stake within reuse is not simply the reuse of buildings per se, but the whole process of building production behind each architectural project.

This lecture series explores projects of reuse in which former offices, factories, or houses are transformed or expanded as residential spaces. Each lecture focuses on one building in order to shed light not only on the advantages of reuse but also on its limits and challenges.