Shifting discourses

AB: When thinking about the conditions for practicing architecture today, one cannot ignore the density of skills and competition within the field, thanks to the many excellent educational institutions such as Accademia di Mendrisio, ETH, and EPFL, while others arrive from abroad, obviously attracted by the flourishing scene. But this phenomenon isn’t unique to architecture; it extends across many cultural sectors. So, there are financial and cultural reasons behind this influx, but there’s also a legacy. In architecture, we have both a past and a present shaped by many figures who have influenced the discourse over the last decades, which continues to draw people in. 

LD: It is not only a Swiss phenomenon. It’s closely tied to shifting environments—we’ve been facing several crises lately, and broader global movements are at play. Perhaps it’s more useful to look at it within the broader European context, where people are eager to act. We have perceived this shift at ETH, where the tendency is no longer solely on fulfilling a service, but on asking: How can you act as an architect? How can you intervene? How can we formulate our own questions? This movement has been a big driver—a catalyst—for the emergence of young practices. It’s no longer about waiting for that one big commission to gain independence. Our discipline itself is now asking: How can we intervene, whether as individuals or collectives? 

FC: For almost seven years, I was part of the seminar weeks at ETH Zürich with the Chair of Philip Ursprung. Twice a year, I worked with architecture students. In the first years—this was about nine years ago—the conversations were all about big names. But a few years later, the tone changed. The discourse became more critical, even aggressive, toward large firms. Students started to critique the exploitative culture, the hierarchies—saying, “It’s always the same names.” There was a clear shift. Students didn’t want to work on signature buildings. They wanted to work within their conditions.

LD: True. When we were students, architectural education was still dominated by the big names. But then, as different crises and movements emerged—ecological, feminist, economic, and global—the need for change, for different perspectives, increased. In that moment, right after my studies, I started teaching at ETH. The arrival of new professors and teachers at ETH brought in fresh voices and shifted the discourse within the school. Today, ten years later, ETH has undergone an almost complete transition. As Finn mentioned, it moved away from a homogeneous, single-voiced approach. It became more open and multivoiced. Different opinions, strategies, and approaches were not only welcomed, they were encouraged. Most importantly, people were empowered to define their own voices. One no longer had to belong to an established scene. As a practice, we position ourselves within this transition—both as a product of it and as a contributor to it.

Reclaiming agency

AB: That also connects to decision-making, which is now fragmented and distributed across politics, regulations, budgets, and multiple stakeholders. Who defines the questions? Who sets the framework? In this landscape, the architect tends to be a service provider rather than a project initiator, responding to a brief shaped by demands, rules, and financial constraints. Our challenge is to push back and ask: What do we expect from the project? Where can we uncover hidden possibilities, within clearly defined boundaries and demands? Too often, especially in competitions, projects are already half-determined before the architect is involved. Could architects be involved earlier?

LD: We can explain this through a few situations where we faced similar conditions. Take the example of ZOLLI, a private commission for the transformation of a villa in Zollikon: a building from the 17th century, with many later additions, considered less valuable than it once was. The clients wanted to remove these additions. One of them was an underground swimming pool from the 70s—a steel construction, a kind of tin box where no light entered. The question became: How could we preserve this already built, alien space and transform it into something of quality—something that could be valued as much as the original 17th-century part? So, through conversation with the clients, we proposed a project that reimagined the underground pool as a new living space. And it was achieved with really simple means—cutting in a new window, adding a skylight, laying a new floor, connecting it to the main house with a stair. Suddenly, the formerly secluded underground pool was no longer a leftover space; it became a room to be immersed in its surroundings.

The same applied to a recent housing competition in Geneva. There was an existing building from the 1950s on the site, the kind most likely to be replaced. Once again, we experienced a familiar scenario: The building was slated for demolition, justified by claims of structural failure. It was within this framework that we approached the competition—not to preserve the existing building as a monument, but to treat its removal as a symptom of broader systemic tendencies. Collaborating with the structural engineer, Neven Kostic, we began questioning its demolition. We examined the original plans and the structure’s current state, and discovered it to be in good condition. The real need was its densification. This led us to propose an addition and transformation, rather than erasure. That became our proposal. Our work aims to demystify technical norms, conventions, and read between the lines—between the cracks where other approaches may emerge. We challenge assumptions, not out of defiance, but to unlock overlooked possibilities within the built environment.

Questions before answers

AB: We’re interested in understanding each situation. When we refer to “existing situations,” it’s not only about a building that’s already there—every site comes with its own conditions. We take time to look closely and identify specific aspects, parameters to base the project on. What we focus on can vary widely: In one case, it meant preserving an underground swimming pool and transforming it into a living room; in another, on the island of Nisyros, it meant maintaining the existing stone retaining walls untouched, so we designed a long, narrow building in response to the constraints. Another project was located at high alpine altitudes, where the only tangible presence was an abundance of sunlight. In that case, we developed, in collaboration with Matyas Enz, a heliocentric architecture that orients itself entirely around the sun and its emitted energy and heat.

Or, as at Kunsthalle Bern, we found a century-old detail: a planned door to the garden that was never finished. Our project became about reactivating that forgotten idea. 

We strive to find a precise narrative for each project. While every context is unique, there are recurring themes we deal with—resisting demolition is certainly a commitment, not as a gesture of nostalgia, but as a deliberate stance against unnecessary erasure. Another is challenging conventional notions of comfort. For example, as we sit here at Modern Animals, an art gallery we designed in Zurich. We asked ourselves: What is an art gallery today? How could it function in a climatically uncontrolled and humid space? What’s the minimal intervention to make that work? In other projects, the question might be: How do you turn a pool into a living room that isn’t insulated like the rest of the house? It means living with the seasons, living with the environment. We constantly ask: Where does the building envelope end? How does inside interact with outside? How can we transcend fully enclosed spaces or even dissolve the boundaries? The era of sealed houses reliant on mechanical ventilation and heating systems is over. Architecture must now engage closely with the exterior, redefining the idea of comfort and the active participation of its users. They interact with the architecture—opening windows, closing curtains, adjusting ventilation. These are topics we love to explore, and they remain constant across all our projects.

LD: The name of our firm, ALIAS, is a deliberate move away from signature firms, away from placing the object at the centre. We believe each project is highly specific. It’s about the method, the process, the discoveries in that exact moment. It’s about being fascinated by ordinary moments—and unveiling the extraordinary within them. ALIAS is a kind of “cover”, embodying the idea of a morphing identity, shaped by each project and the stories they carry.

Beyond the gallery

LD: We chose to conduct the interview at MAN (Modern Animals), a space we designed that synthesises many of the questions we’ve been exploring throughout our conversation. Located in Zurich, the gallery began as much with questions as with a programme. The process evolved from simply providing a service to collaboratively shaping the project. We first encountered the space together with Finn and David, noting its very particular climatic conditions, and let those conditions drive the design. We had to address humidity, light, and materiality while working within the existing fabric. There was a fascination with the raw walls and the atmosphere created by the humidity, but we understood this conflicted with the expectations of a traditional gallery, which relies on tightly controlled conditions and pristine white walls. So we treated the gallery as an extension of the exterior, making all detailing and design decisions in response to outdoor conditions. 

What was fantastic about the space, situated in a courtyard on the ground floors, was its potential to become a truly public place, where people could enter, exit, and move freely: an accessible, barrier-free space, as an extension of the public realm. We wanted to tackle the question of typology—what a gallery could be, and how it might be transcended. This approach defines our work: questioning and reshaping given conditions, rather than simply accepting them.

FC: For me, it was also about understanding that I wanted to create a space where people would want to stay. There was a study: the average time spent in a gallery is four and a half minutes. People walk in and out. I wanted people to stay. The design encourages visitors to move freely between inside and outside, offering opportunities to sit, talk, and engage with art in a relaxed setting. This approach provides an alternative to formal and exclusive galleries. The gallery’s distinct character quickly attracted attention internationally; its unconventional space was noted by curators as something unusual and compelling for Zurich, helping the gallery gain recognition.

Myth and morphology

LD: One of our latest projects lies on a tiny, volcanic island in the Dodecanese in Greece. Fertile volcanic soil once nurtured its fields—now echoed only by the terraced hills, where ancient stone walls hold the memory of the former cultivation. On this volcanic island, myth lives in the earth itself: born when Poseidon tore a piece from Kos to crush a giant below. When the ground trembles or erupts, it’s said the giant stirs beneath the rock. Every stone found here carries the legacy of past volcanic eruptions, and these stones form the remaining walls.

AB: When you walk through a place, you see its architecture, but you don’t always have the keys to reading it. Architecture is readable in its form— the story of the giants, the value of stone, the mythology—all rooted in the language of the place. We wish that the backstory of a piece of architecture could reveal itself in the experience of it. With art, we expect to discover meaning beyond what’s visible. With architecture, that mindset is less common. Through our projects, we wish to share stories that go beyond the surface, especially to allow and foster new ones. These narratives —sometimes subtle, sometimes more explicit—matter. They allow architecture to speak not just through form or function, but through the intangible. What excites us most is when our architecture opens up new perspectives—when it becomes a catalyst for something.

LD: This story is woven into the site's narrative, and it's the material culture— the stones from the volcanic eruptions are everywhere. The island is sublime, overwhelming in its beauty. You don’t know how to intervene. With the volcano at your back and the endless sea ahead, you stand between these two incredible forces. Then, there’s the carefully terraced terrain. We just knew: We have to intervene as little as possible. To build with the terrain, avoid excavation or demolition, and only perform a quiet intervention with the existing morphology. 

FC: Buildings like these are eye-catching. One drives by on their motorcycle and stops and says, “What’s that?” I think people feel this with a good building, just like in a good painting—even if they don’t know the story behind it. People look at Caravaggio paintings—they may not know this is Saint Matthew or that it’s a depiction of something from the Gospels. But they know, without knowing. If something is deep, people feel it. I hate buildings where you need a seminar to understand them. A good building—or a good artwork—speaks for itself. One doesn’t need the whole story. But if the story is there, it deepens one’s understanding. 

A door that changes everything

LD: Let’s talk about a related thing we just experienced with the Kunsthalle Bern door. It’s a spectacular story. It began with a request from the fire department that the building needed a new fire escape. Without it, occupancy would be limited to just 50 people at a time, which basically would’ve barred the building from public use. The building is over a century old. We started looking into it—either you make a new fire escape route inside or you add one outside. As we researched the archives and found a forgotten sketch from 1917—not even an official plan, just a sketch—that showed the building, the park, and this little path leading into the façade. It was never built, but it showed an intention of having a door there at some point.

AB: The building has three floors. The main entrance is on the street level; then, there’s a second exhibition floor connected to a garden in the back, built at the same time but never connected. Our intervention was about making a fire exit, and we realised that with this, the garden could finally be connected to the art institution. A forgotten garden—it was a revelation. What’s interesting is how little you need to do to completely change how a building is experienced. It was just a hole in the back façade. The first exhibition after the renovation took place in the garden—with a sound performance by JJJJJerome Ellis—with hundreds of people moving in and out of the institution with such ease. That was the architectural intervention. Sure, we made a door, but the real project was the act of the opening, allowing a new access, dissolving a threshold, and connecting two previously separate spaces—making space for new use. This case matters today: architecture is often consumed through images. Finn mentioned earlier that sometimes you feel an architecture is right, but rarely when transmitted through images. We scroll through hundreds of images a day, but rarely experience the architecture itself. This project resists that. It’s not about a dramatic gesture—it’s about a social moment, a civic act.