Relational Architecture: Conceiving the City in Terms of Its In-Between Spaces

This is the keynote lecture following the MArch Jury for the Housing and Urbanism Taught Postgraduate Programme

The world is in motion, with architecture lagging behind. Even in times of digitalisation, demographic change and climate crisis, architecture remains a design task. We will not be able to solve the challenges of the future with smart timber structures and massive CO2 savings alone; in terms of social sustainability, the question arises: How do we want to live together? And how do we develop a new coherent architectural language within a tight framework of many complex constraints? Architecture must adapt to people’s needs and not vice versa. At best, the spaces we live in can tell us something about the current state of our society: about today’s wide diversity of life plans, the spatial overlap of home and work, or the value of community in times of isolation and hyper-individualisation. From the perspective of sociology, space is produced by social interactions. Relational architecture lies the focus on the effect of what is built rather than on its component parts. It describes a new search for connection and finds answers on how to shape the change in a pleasurable, inventive and poetic way.

Anne Kaestle studied architecture from 1994 to 2000 at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, and with Peter Zumthor at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio. She spent one year working in Buenos Aires with Justo Solsona, followed by six years with Marcel Meili, Markus Peter Architekten in Zurich. Together with Dan Schürch, she founded the architectural office Duplex Architects, Zurich in 2007. Meanwhile the partnership has been expanded and additional locations in Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Paris have been established. Their first monograph 'Rethinking Housing' was published by park books in 2021, it exemplarily demostrates how innovative housing design in Switzerland works and what it can contribute to urban development.