Ingredients for a socio-ecological construction transformation
Tour d’Horizon on the 24.09.2025, 18.00 | Architekturforum Zurich
How can we continue to build cities in an environmentally friendly way and create new living space without causing rents to skyrocket and people to lose their homes? What is needed to ensure that our cities remain liveable, accessible to all and enable social participation for everyone during these processes?
Examples include: renovating occupied buildings instead of constructing replacement buildings, applying cost-based rents or income-based rent models, enabling denser construction through architectural tricks, ensuring good communication with tenants, and selling and inheriting houses fairly.
With the support of various experts, we will take a tour d’horizon of the most important ingredients for a social and ecological construction revolution. During the aperitif afterwards, we will have the opportunity to explore the topics in greater depth and discuss them. The evening will be moderated by Philippe Koch (Housing Delegate for the City of Zurich).
The experts are Rebecca Geyer, Andreas Haug, Sabina Ruff, Andrea Schafroth, Yarin Shmerling, Antonia Steger, Sabeth Tödtli, Thomas Wirz and others.
The programme is the brainchild of the ‘Working Group on Socio-Ecological Construction Transformation’, in which around 50 practitioners have been sharing their experiences of socially responsible housing construction for around two years. The programme was organised by the associations Urban Equipe and Bureau Giacometti as part of the Stadt_Labor series of the Ponte Project Fund Foundation.
The event is part of the series ‘Building the Future. Now!‘ at the Architekturforum Zürich, and is also part of the event series ’Social-ecological construction transition now!”, organised by the Working Group on Social-Ecological Construction Transition and the associations Bureau Giacometti and Urban Equipe, as part of the Stadt_Labor series of the Ponte Project Fund Foundation. The findings of the event will be published in a book by Hochparterre Verlag in 2026.