The Studio of Peter Märkli
Director, Atelier Bow-Wow/ Associate Professor, University of Tsukuba  Momoyo Kaijima

During the winter semester of 1996 and the summer semester of 1997, I participated in the studio of Peter Markli at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zurich). The task was to use the urban context of the city of Zurich to consider the scale of “gathering” (multiple dwelling houses or apartments). The topics for the winter and summer semesters were, respectively, “high-rise apartment buildings” and “large-scale apartment buildings.” The students began by searching for sites within the city of Zurich where the buildings defined in the assignment would be constructed. Next, they determined the scale of the apartment buildings and the functions with which they would be provided. In designing the buildings, the students determined the placement on the site, the external form as a building volume, and the location of entrances, stairs and elevators. They also considered the floor plan of the residences and the design of the windows, verandahs and exterior materials.
At first glance, this may seem rather trivial as a class assignment. But at each step in the design process, Markli and his assistants asked the students about the meaning of that step. At the classes, held on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and the monthly lectures, from early in the morning until late at night, we spent a great deal of time debating each student’s project. These discussions unearthed the framework for a variety of designs for high-rise apartment buildings.
For example, two blocks of high-rise apartment buildings were constructed in Zurich in the 1970s, along the main road at the west side of the city. At the time, this provoked a debate about scenic beauty, and no further construction of such buildings was conducted. Considered from this perspective, the assignment to design high-rise apartment buildings in Zurich itself unearthed issues relating to the city and architecture that had once been buried, raising the possibility of reviving this debate in the city 20 years later and questioning what the city’s position on these issues should be. As illustrated by this example, the assignment dealt with issues at all levels of design.
The assignment defined a high-rise building as one containing six stories or more, and the students themselves proposed the number of floors and the scale of the building. But there is a world of difference between a six-story building and a 10-story building, or a 20-story building, or a 40-story building. This is not simply a matter of taste but a matter of the dialogue with other buildings created by the specific building height, in both the existing city and the city of the future. Furthermore, the numerous towers of different heights on the existing high-rise apartment buildings create a group landscape, and this will change according to whether the new building is designed so as to harmonize with them or to stand out independently. Moreover, the tower-style buildings in Zurich also include church bell towers and TV towers. Originally, churches in Europe were the symbol of the region. If there are locations where high-rise buildings have not yet been constructed, there is also a need to give them meaning that will enable them to become a symbol of the region.
The course brought out a variety of buildings as well, ranging from Italian Romanesque classical architecture to the works of famous architects throughout history, to anonymous nondescript apartment buildings in Zurich, and the problems involved in the design and the solutions they proposed were compared. But these were not treated as petrified elements. Markli was interested in how these buildings expressed an attitude toward life as they confronted their world and its history. “How does this building move?” “How do people enter the building?” Building, soul, movement. Through mimetic expressions such as these, which treat the building as something that is alive, Markli is telling the students that the building must be alive, that it must express the energy of the people that live in that building. At the same time, he is also interested in public halls, hearths, plazas and other examples of the relationship between human beings and architecture that have not changed very much since ancient times. He seeks an architecture that has joy, and he also questions the modernity of these elements.
Through such discussions with Markli, the students come to understand how the buildings that they design approach significance and problems at various levels, and they feel a sense of both resonance and awe as they understand that the building will become a part of the presences that make up the world and its history. They discover the language of architecture and experience a dialogue with it, and in the facial expressions and attitude of Markli, who will not stop questioning, they learn the joy of an interactive architecture that is connected to the world, while befriending the doubts that arise as a work of architecture is being born. Although it was only a year, my experience at the studio of Markli where I was able to learn the living significance of the architecture in Europe was an invaluable one that had a profound influence on my subsequent architectural activities.