Michael Waibel will discuss urban growth in the Vietnamese capital Hà N?i, where the urban planning process itself is the direct result of a necessity to assure the production of quality urban space in the face of private development. After the gradual introduction of market-led reforms in Vietnam since the late 1980s, known as ??i M?i (Renovation) Policy, Vietnam's economy gained tremendous momentum. The Vietnamese state had to give up its role as sole provider of housing and real estate and new players entered the arena of urban development. This talk will investigate the dynamics behind this, taking a look at the driving forces as well as the key stakeholders, their constant negotiation processes and how this materializes within the urban fabric, with Hanoi taken as a case study

Dr. Michael Waibel is Senior Researcher at the Department of Economic Geography of the University of Hamburg. He holds a Ph.D. in Human Geography and a M.Sc. on Economic Geography with key competencies in urbanism, empirical research methods and urban governance. He gains more than 15 years of international experience in academic work, and capacity development in Southeast Asia as well as in East Asia. In 2001, he published his PhD-thesis about the urban development of Hanoi with special consideration of the socio-economic transition of the Ancient Quarter driven by private shop-owners

On the occassion of the opening of ETH Studio Basels spring semester and the start of the research project on the Red River Delta, Kelly Shannon will discuss the watery landscape of Northern Vietnam. In the delta, ancient traditions of phong thuy (the science of wind and water) placed special reverence on water bodies and the relation of settlement to them. Ancient ingenuity in agricultural irrigation and water management structured the vast plain as a highly regulated and interdependent system of dikes and sluices regulated by dams and pumps. Historically, Vietnam's water paradigm integrated a range of actors, forces, aspects of life, adaptation and a certain degree of accommodation of the forces of nature. Today, in a period of economic liberalization and the transition from tradition to modernity, water is often regarded from a singular and dominating perspective whether political, technical or commercial. The lecture will look at the city's layered narratives, interpretative mappings and projective cartographies for the city and territory.

Kelly Shannon is Associate Professor of Landscape Urbanism at University of Leuven. Most of her work focuses on the evolving relation of landscape, infrastructure and urbanization in Asia. She has led major urban design projects including the new masterplan for Cantho (2010, Vietnam), Banjamarsin (2009, Indonesia), Hiep Phuoc (2008, HCMC, Vietnam) and Vinh (2004, Vietnam).

mit Prof. Marc Angélil, Prof. Milica Topalovic, Prof. Roger Diener und Prof. Marcel Meili

Das ETH Studio Basel analysiert seit Jahren die Gegenwart und Zukunft urbanistischer Entwicklung an diversen Orten Europas. Einer der Schwerpunkte war die Stadt Belgrad und deren Entwicklung von der Zeit des internationalen Embargos gegen die Regierung Milosevic bis heute. Nun liegt das Ergebnis vor: ein detailliertes, reich illustriertes Buch, das unter dem Stichwort «Formal / Informal» zusammenfasst, wie sich die Stadt in diesen Umbruchjahren entwickelt hat.

ETH Studio Basel: Prof. Roger Diener, Prof. Marcel Meili,
Mathias Gunz, Rolf Jenni, Christian Mueller Inderbitzin, Vesna Jovanovic
Exercise type: E (Entwurf) with P (Planung); Group work in Basel and in research location
Start: Tuesday, 21st February 2012, 10.00am, ETH Studio Basel, Spitalstrasse 8, 4056 Basel

ETH Studio Basel is investigating processes of urban transformation of territories – areas extending beyond the traditional urban cores and metropolitan centers. Previous projects in Egypt, Italy and Florida have shown that, under penetrating globalization, ever increasing movement of people and explosive population growth, once rural territories transform into novel landscapes. Such places attain a density of functions and complex meanings as vital as cities (and deserving the same analytical probing constantly applied to cities) while at the same time being characterized by very different, specific logics of territorial appropriation.
Following China, the Communist Republic of Vietnam introduces reforms allowing a form of market economy, releasing a pressurized valve in the economic machinery of South East Asia. Private development and government ambitions are reshaping the flat, watery Delta. Aggressive climate and an intense recent history pre-condition all processes here, the logics of which we will discover through the lense of urban practices, cartography and statistics, as well as a photodocumentary approach, in the aim to comprehensively describe the different modes of spatial occupation and transformation within the Red River Delta.
Two weeks of fieldwork in Northern Vietnam will be integral to the work. We will travel through the Delta starting from Hanoi and it's environs, to the port city of Hai Phong, the industrial parks along the interconnecting highway, and the adjacent UNESCO protected Ha Long Bay area, allthewhile discovering the specific balance of settlements and agriculture, the intricate and omnipresent water systems, protected reserves enjoyed once by the French colonials, cascaded mining landscapes and much more.

Food in Basel  -  The Metabolism of Cities

Energy-Water-Food-Land-Waste
ETH Studio Basel has started a new urban and territorial research project looking at the metabolism of cities. Energy-Water-Food-Land-Waste represent some of the material flows into and out of our urban space. More than just the “infrastructure” of a city, the flow of matter has always had fundamental impact on the shape and the operation of our urban territories, linking topics such as trade and cultural exchange, with resources and sustainability, as well as with the relationship between the urban and the rural.
For the academic year 2011/12 we will start this research phase by looking at food as a means of understanding the larger inputs and outputs of the city, and as a force that allows us to analyze the territorial dimension of the urban condition. How does food shape our cities? How and where is food produced? How does food travel from its place of production, via processing centers into the shops and markets? What kind of infrastructure is employed? What kind of energy is used and what kind of waste is produced? How do we feed cities and regions? These are some of the questions that the research project will be engaged with. Beyond the question of food, it will also allow us to understand how cities are essentially tied to a territorial dimension and to a network of material flows, thereby inherently undermining the classical notion of a rural / urban divide. Other topics of metabolism, such as energy and waste will be studied in subsequent years.

Food in MetroBasel
The tri-national territory of Basel and its regional context will be the focus for the topic of food. Although it is an area we have studied in the past, we will be able to understand it in a novel way through the perspective of metabolism and food, and its associated questions. Thematically the semester will follow the “food chain” by looking at topics such as water, agriculture, the production of food, its distribution, its trading, preparation and eating, and ultimately ending with the subject of waste. Through our local expertise and existing networks we plan to use the project to eventually have an impact on the ongoing local and regional discussion of urban and territorial planning and influence or trigger actual proposals. The students will be able to build upon our previous research, such as the Metrobasel Comic and Switzerland: An Urban Potrait, and immerse themselves into a topic that attempts to ask fundamental questions about everyday life and its spatial dimension in this region.

Semester Organization
For the first time, instead of a one-semester research project, we will structure our program as a combined research and design studio lasting two semesters. This will give us a unique opportunity to connect an in-depth investigation into a specific research topic with the development of an urban or architectural design proposal. In view of this approach and the potentials that it involves, we therefore seek students who are very committed to engage in this long-term project with us. Accepting only 14 students, working in groups of two, it is mandatory to enroll for two consecutive semesters (fall 2011 and spring 2012).

The first semester will focus on the careful and precise description, documentation and analysis of existing processes while in the second semester the students will develop a projective dimension and design proposal out of their analysis. The project starts on Tuesday 20th September 2011, at ETH Studio Basel, Spitalstrasse 8, 4056 Basel.
In October 2011, we will travel to Piedmont, Italy for a one-week fieldwork and workshop with the University of Gastronomic Sciences (UNISG) in Bra. In order to get a global perspective on the topic of food this is followed by a one-week fieldwork to an African country in March 2012, Havanna, Cuba.  (Both study trips are compulsory.)
The research project will use a number of tools that have been developed by ETH Studio Basel in the past, expanding these methodologies in the context of the topic of metabolism.
The final presentation of the student’s works will be in the form of a book and a slide presentation. The estimated fees for participating in the project will be 900CHF for HS 2011 and 1400 CHF for FS 2012. Students who are receiving stipends and grants, or who have been exempted from school fees can seek financial assistance by the ETH.
(Application forms are available through Mrs. Giordano, HIL E 73.3)