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Diploma Project
Denner Fluid
Forever Young
HouseEurope!
Internship works
‘Unfamiliar Ageing’
Nominated for the THEO Förderpreis
Spring Semester 2025
Prof. Anna Puigjaner
Teaching team:
Anna Puigjaner, He Shen, Dafni Kalliopi Retzepi
Sunset Over Mulholland Drive (2019), a documentary by Uli Gaulke and Agnes Lisa Wegner, portrays the lives of retired film-industry professionals residing at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Los Angeles. This unique community, part of the Motion Picture & Television Fund, supports aging Hollywood members by combining healthcare and creative infrastructure with residential living. Through vivid visuals, group discussions, and personal interviews, the film explores how aging artists sustain their creative identities and social bonds through shared experience, mutual support, and access to purpose-built spaces. Rather than relying on traditional family structures or isolated retirement homes, residents benefit from a model of collective living that fosters connection and continued artistic practice. This integration of care and creativity presents a compelling alternative approach to aging.
Such models, however, remain rare. In Zürich, despite all cultural fundings, aging artists still face challenges; financial insecurity, limited access to suitable creative spaces, and urban environments ill-suited to reduced mobility. These issues complicate not just physical movement, but also the continuation of artistic work and social engagement. In particular, the Industriequartier already hosts a diversity of creative infrastructures and community spaces; yet, few are designed with aging practitioners in mind. Retirement, for many artists, is not a clear break but an evolution of their relationship with work, identity, and space.
Working with plaster to develop a flexible partition wall, a scenographic element with a front and a back, this system allows each resident to choose their own layout, mixing or separating creative and living spaces. The housing is therefore designed to accommodate various mobility and creative needs by adapting over time to changing circumstances.
The transformation of the parking structure presents several challenges, such as low ceilings, split levels, and a lack of natural light in the center. To address these issues, the central slabs are cut away and replaced with a platform lift, allowing residents to easily transport materials and objects into their spaces, while also providing a limitless vertical space for working on large-scale projects. The back of the partition wall, which explores the potential of darker, more enclosed spaces, can be used for storage, sleeping areas, or darkrooms, depending on specific creative needs.
By integrating accessible housing with both shared and private studios, flexible living spaces, and mobility-conscious design, the aim is to create a space where artistic work and community life continue beyond conventional retirement, drawing inspiration from the case study while responding to the specific social, spatial, and cultural conditions of Zürich.
2/2 Roof plan
1/1 Detail axonometry
Reproductive Care
Group work with: Anna Ozhiganova, Armand Zanota
Fall Semester 2023
Prof. Anna Puigjaner
Teaching team: Anna Puigjaner, Jo Baan, Lisa Maillard, Luis Úrculo, Pol Esteve Castelló, He Shen
To address this gap, an abandoned Denner building is envisioned as an interim multi-purpose extension, complementing the aforementioned institutions. Located in Schwamendingen, this reimagined space will offer both permanent and temporary housing for non-cisgender people, alongside spaces for collective reproductive labour and public events.
The strategy is similar on the first floor. We remove some walls. And add some others. The first floor, once an office level, will host a working area, a collectively accessible kitchen, and ten varied-sized rooms. The more visible and preponderant intervention regards the entrance. We refuse this status and propose something the canon would not describe as “entrance”, but more as an amorphous threshold, a true room in itself, to get ready, dress up, and go out to the world. This wide threshold is a celebration of that moment, filled with clothes and all items needed to prepare to go out.
The ground floor of the building is mostly kept as it is. It already stands as an ideal canvas for public events, distinguished by its high ceiling and glazed facade.
1/2 First floor, existing
2/2 First floor, post transformation
Ground floor possibilities (non-exhaustive)
Ground floor possibilities (non-exhaustive)
Ground floor possibilities (non-exhaustive)
Ground floor possibilities (non-exhaustive)
Group work with: Zelal Sari
Fall Semester 2024
Teaching team: Oliver Lütjens, Thomas Padmanabhan, Céline Bessire, Jacob Höppner
We reimagined the relationship between public and private spaces by reversing the conventional layout. Private gardens are placed along the street, while house access occurs via communal squares. These serve as entry points and shared spaces for gatherings or events.
1/1 Model picture, new line
2/2 Model picture, in between existing
The row house modules allow flexible configurations by linking units. Symmetrical in design, with two massive walls and two large openings, the modules avoid defining a front or back. The interior is a flexible open plan, anchored by a staircase and bathroom core inspired by Brancusi’s balanced forms.
Prefabricated strawbale timber walls provide a massive, sculptural appearance, similarly to Brancusi’s works, while maintaining flexibility. This materiality harmonizes form, function, and adaptability, emphasizing the project’s plasticity and modularity.
Group work with: Xingyu Bai, Clément Estreicher, Seraina Muntwiler, Jonas Odermatt
Spring semester 2024
Teaching team: Arno Brandlhuber, Olaf Grawert, Severin Bärenbold, Pan Hu, Alina Kolar, Meghan Rolvien
As part of the editorial team for the Spring 2024 semester, our work centered on presenting the initiative to the public through video content for the website and social media. From editing footage for The Demolition Drama to creating an engaging and informative trailer, we explored the political dimensions of construction and architecture, emphasizing the need for a shift in perspective on these issues. Additionally, we focused on making the topic accessible to a broader audience, ensuring that the general public, beyond those in the architectural field, could understand and engage with the importance of the initiative.
2022-2023
Geneva
Location: Neuchâtel (NE)
Date: 2023
Surface: 14’800 m2
Procedure: open competition (2nd prize)
Client: Republic and Canton of Neuchâtel
The project is based, at different scales, on the porous duality of a heart and its periphery: beyond the solid forms of the programme, the interstitial voids are shaped to serve as both functional and relational links. Thus, on an urban scale, connections are established between the building and its context: here a forecourt, there a square or a terrace, serving as opportunities for exchanges, and anchoring UniHub as the new hub of the district. And within the building, between four cores that punctuate its boundaries, the occupation of the core varies according to the permeability required on each floor. The demarcation is porous, between programme and empty spaces, with places for exchanges, or meetings, or even retreats, which will make UniHub the theatre of new constellations. Because studying is a collective affair.
Personal participation on:
Drawings
Project design
Calculations
1/2 First floor
2/2 Second floor
Raphaël Nussbaumer, Marie Theres Stauffer,
Infolio, Gollion
2023
22 x 30 cm
40 pages
Contents: numerous illustrations and plans in black and white and colour
The residential buildings along Avenue Alfred-Bertrand, designed by Léon Bovy and Bovy & Reverdin, exemplify Geneva’s early 20th-century urban expansion, blending classical, Heimatstil, and modernist influences. Their design integrates open block layouts and squares, reflecting the hygienist debates of the era while merging historical and contemporary expressions.
Personal participation on:
Archive work
Planification
Drawings