Zürich did not impress me at first. It’s stern, practical, highly functional and pretty bland from the outside architecturally. But from the inside – the city won me over. In their discipline and restraint, there is a design thinking that shines through from all that constraint. Almost as if they want to be ignored to be left alone to not waste their energy on those that don’t bother to really pay attention.
Notes from Gemini:
Designed by EM2N in 2014, Zurich’s Toni-Areal transforms a colossal 1970s milk processing factory into a vibrant 125,000 m² vertical campus. Housing the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), the ZHAW, a museum, and 100 apartments, the building operates as a self-contained “city within a building”.
I was recommended to go to the Design Museum, but when I got to this building I was lost as to where the museum was and then totally shell shocked about mandate and concept of the place…. and well, the size of it. As with many places, I always just keep walking, keep sticking my head around corners, until I hit a barrier of non-entry. I evidently made it to the 6th floor before feeling a bit metaphorically dizzy with the notion that the city is so safe that anyone can walk around. Most buildings like this are secured.
I just listened to a podcast about noetic science (why this matters I actually don’t know yet- but the premonition is there)- a term I had never heard before- and there are a couple of notes that apply here. In listening to this and opening myself to ideas about this post- I immediately recalled my time at the Fine Arts department at Carnegie Mellon. I realized there that my talent was not in the fine arts but it was also there that I observed what possible freedom of expression felt like- the arts are after all an expression of feelings. Why I love electronic music and the rave is because there is no ownership, there is meant to be no boundary between the tracks just as there is meant to be no boundary in physicality- it is how we all become consciousness. And on that note of boundaries, while it is important to note how many disciplines this building houses- it doesn’t take much to know which disciplines are located where- it is actually even more important to note that because under one roof, the opportunities for cross pollination and dissolution of boundaries is possible making for true creative process. It is these interfaces that bring us forward.
Notes from Gemini:
Noetic science is a multidisciplinary field that applies objective, empirical methods to study subjective human experiences—specifically consciousness, intuition, and inner knowing.
The word noetic comes from the Greek noēsis, meaning “direct knowing” or “inner wisdom”. While traditional science primarily studies the physical world through external observation, noetic science attempts to bridge that outer world with our internal, subjective realities.
“States of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance…” — William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902)
At its heart, noetic science investigates the premise that consciousness is not merely a passive byproduct of brain chemistry, but an active force capable of influencing reality and connecting humans in ways science is only beginning to quantify.
What I would actually say to someone going to Zürich, is go to visit the various Zürich University publicly accessible spaces- the Botanical Garden, Toni-Areal and in theory the Rechtswissenschaftliche Bibliothek (which I heard is not available so I didn’t try but will if I return) and who knows what others.
To the museum itself, it’s just a small part of Toni-Areal but it is dense and well curated. Easily missed however, is the archives. They have something like 500,000 archived Swiss designs across disciplines and something like 350,000 of those are Swiss posters??? I would definitely modify my recommendation to anyone visiting that it is not the Design Museum itself that should be visited- it is the archives in the basement that is the best kept secret.
The space of the “store house” (the entire archives lives in this building somehow)- this happens to be the third I’ve visited, its a great concept I hope to see more of – feels like something out of the future with it’s motion sensor lighting- I imagine the voice of HAL suddenly being heard. I had SO MUCH FUN in this discovery and got to be a little creative with the mirrors and glass floors- pure joy.
One of the hardest disciplines in design is typography. The Swiss excel in the heritage here and this museum does a great job to highlight that. It pulls from the deep bench of archives also to highlight poster design- generally large format which is my favorite.
Some additional shots from the Toni-Areal spaces. In the end, I think Toni-Areal convinced me that I should move to Zürich- don’t ask me why, but putting that out there into the universe.
I’m interested to create a book- I’ve already mentioned this in some posts. Finding places of inspiration is the purpose of this blog- and to that, I would love to return to this place to do a little creating. And because creating requires energy- a side note about some places close by: IM VIADUKT, Frau Gerolds Garten and Granò all highly recommended close by for that.
Address: Pfingstweidstrasse 96, 8005 Zürich, Switzerland
Website: Design Boom write up
Sounds design exhibit
