Room for living spaces in office buildings

What importance is given to housing in the Architecture programme?

It is given a great deal of importance. It is often the classic entry-level subject, which has a lot to do with the fact that we all live somewhere and share different living experiences. Housing development is a frequent and demanding task in our daily work.

You describe housing as an entry-level topic. Would you consider it as the ultimate supreme?

I do not wish to rank architectural tasks. But from a historical perspective, it is worth mentioning that housing projects, in particular large-scale ones, only became an architect’s task in the 20th century. Before that, residential buildings, also known as secular buildings, were built by craftsmen and master builders and were considered ‘anonymous architecture’.

From an economic point of view, housing is very complex. Is there room for such complexity in a degree programme?

The economic reality that actually shapes housing can only be transferred to a limited extent to an institution of higher education. It cannot be meaningfully integrated into the core curriculum. However, issues related to room allocation and floor plans within a building, as well as the proportionality of areas and the depth of intervention during conversion – both of which are cost drivers – can be addressed effectively in teaching.

In the past four or five years, your lessons on housing have focused on ‘repurposing’. Can you explain why?

Admittedly, this is a steep start for a first semester. But I am certain that the professional challenges in the architecture of the future are in repurposing buildings rather than building from scratch.

For one of the semester projects, you focused on the repurposing of ‘The Gallery’, in Glattbrugg, into flats. The building is a sort of city in itself. Its large office blocks display high-quality architecture from 1989. That was a very steep start indeed!

That’s right. But the repurposing of vacant office space and buildings is a highly topical issue. It presents a valuable opportunity to actually create new living space without displacing long-time residents, while leveraging urban resources for the development of new housing. The question is also interesting because we are not dealing here with the typical case of gentrification that often comes with renovations, extensions and additions to residential buildings. Giving new life and a new meaning to a high-quality, almost iconic building like ‘The Gallery’, 95 percent of which is empty, instead of simply demolishing it, seemed to be a relevant and inspiring task for a semester project.

This is an extremely challenging task indeed – too challenging? Are innovative, tangible solutions even possible?

The size was indeed a major challenge. The students worked on the building in teams of two or three persons, simulating teams in larger offices. It was also a confrontation with the strong language of postmodernism, which is rather unpopular in society and architecture. The building’s dimensions and depth posed significant challenges, making standard patterns unsuitable as solutions. It was also an opportunity to move away from established housing ideas. In other words, there was a significant innovation potential. It turned out to be a great practice object.

Was the project a mere exercise in the end?

No, not at all. The students initially reported feeling somewhat overwhelmed. However, they learned a lot from analysing and grasping such a complex building in order to develop effective planning solutions. The fact that they were able to reinterpret the building as a global entity made them proud. Furthermore, repurposing is a task that students will encounter regularly throughout their career. It is clear from current publications that vacant urban office buildings should be regarded as important spatial resources and that the era of eradication and demolition should be long gone. It is clear that a sustainable approach is required here. I would like to stress that the owners were always present during the reviews with the students. Their opinion has also evolved. At the beginning, they were rather sceptical. But in the course of the process, it became clear to them that these large areas without daylight lacked inherent value and that a residential repurposing would also have to intervene in the primary structure of ‘The Gallery’.

Will there be a follow-up project?

Yes. We plan to create a project documentation and to show the work on ‘The Gallery’ in our annual exhibition in 2027. I also hope that we can raise awareness of the potential for repurposing office buildings at our public events. We are currently in dialogue with the owners of ‘The Gallery’ about how we can contribute to the discourse about its further development. In any case, our intention is to disseminate the findings from our student assignments to society.

Another semester project focused on housing estates from the 1950s, another highly topical and complex subject.

There are thousands of 1950s estates in Switzerland similar to the ones in Bern Ostring: typical blocks with two or three units per floor and classic family layouts. The task was clear: to upgrade these estates wisely and in a manner that was respectful and socially acceptable for longstanding and older tenants, with additions and new housing options. The central question was how architecture can help older people stay in their homes. This was not only about accessibility, but about motivating residents to take the odd flight of stairs to access a meeting point. Promoting daily movement is key to helping people remain independent in the long term.

Can you tell us more about the students’ assignments and their recommendations?

Here also, it was important to consider the perspective and needs of older people. Empathy played an essential role. Older discussion partners (‘citizen scientists’) could be approached by the students, for whom it was a valuable experience to test their notions of old age. This also resulted in a wealth of novel suggestions and ideas for projects combining traditional renovation with the promotion of physical activity. The project was met with a tremendous response at the 2025 annual exhibition. The students’ work was also presented at this year’s Pro Senectute Congress for the Elderly in Biel/Bienne. In addition, we will be organising an exhibition with the City of Zurich Retirement Homes Foundation in autumn 2026.

In other words, your aim of disseminating the findings from your student assignments to society was achieved.

Absolutely! Another project worth mentioning is ‘Health in existing buildings: affordable and social transformation in Bern’, for which we were awarded the mandate as a model project for sustainable spatial development 2025-2030 by the Federal Office for Housing (FOH).

How easy is it to find cooperation partners for housing projects?

Securing real properties and owners willing to make their buildings available for training purposes can sometimes be challenging. Obviously, Bern University of Applied Sciences does not aspire to, nor should it seek to, replace practitioners. We are primarily responsible for architectural training and are not service providers. However, we can think more freely about issues, partly because we allow ourselves to suspend laws from time to time to consider whether it might make sense to change certain rules in practice. The knowledge gained from ‘real-world laboratories’ is considerable for everyone involved. For these real-world laboratories, we are seeking people who are convinced that housing design can be thought of differently, without it immediately becoming an implementation project.

How do you override rules and laws in the real-world laboratory?

Deciding which laws to retain for a semester assignment or which areas to focus on is a real challenge. It is vital to strike a balance between academic freedom and a vision that is in touch with reality. In the case of ‘The Gallery’, I left out the economic aspect. But the students had to justify the proportionality of their interventions. The combination of academic freedom and real-life questioning is both interesting and rewarding, for me too, having spent many years in teaching.