Movement Matters
A SUMMER SCHOOL CURATED BY :
Akshar Gajjar (b.1998, India) is an architect and urban designer and is currently a PhD student at EPFL. His research looks at material production and it’s socio-ecological relationships. He studied architecture and urban design at CEPT University, EPFL and ETH Zurich. He is the author of “Living together: More-than-human ecologies for architectural thinking” (Birkhauser, 2025).
Debasish Borah (b. 1987, India) is a visual artist and curator working with performance, photography, and film. His research and practice examines imperial cartography, borders, and embodied aesthetics in the postcolonial; he is interested in the emotional and cognative relationship of postcolonial bodies with modernity.
Debasish recieved his Master’s in History, Theory and Design from CEPT University, India in 2011 and has taught across art, design and architecture schools in India, Europe and USA. He is the co-founder of Farside Collective, art space and book publishers and alsothe co-founder of Art Book Depot, India’s first independently organised Art book festival. He has exhibited and attended residencies in India, Middle-East and Europe.
Debasish is currently a Doctoral fellow at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich and a visiting fellow at the Centre of Post Colonial Studies, Goldsmiths University of London, UK.
Jacopo Zani (b. 1996, Italy) completed an MSc in Architecture, Urbanism and Building Science at TUDelft in 2021, after a period of study at ETH Zurich, and a BSc at Politecnico di Milano. I have worked as an architect and researcher in Belgium and Italy. Currently I am a PhD student at the Institute of Urban and Landscape Studies (Lus), Chair of History and Theory of Urban Design, ETH Zurich where my research analyses the role of migrant workers, extracted minerals and industrial forests in the the spatial transformation related to coal mining in Post-war Belgium.
GRAPHIC DESIGN & STUDENT ASSISTANT Simon Nougué & Lauro Nächt (ETHZ)
With
GUEST TUTORS AND ARTISTS:
Prof. Dr. Philip Ursprung (b.1963, USA) is currently the head of the gta Insitute, D-Arch, ETH Zurich. He is an art historian and in 2023 he together with Karin Sander, he was the curator of the Swiss pavilion at the 18th Architecture Biennale, Venice. He has taught across universities across the world in Europe, Asia and Americas. He studied art history, history and German literature in Geneva, Vienna and Berlin. Since 2011 Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, ETH Zurich. 2017–2019 Dean of the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich.
Prof Dr. Florian Dombias, (b. 1966, berlin, DE) has focused on wind, labiliities and techtonic activities. His artistic practice includes a variety of media and repetitive articulations in happenings and sound installations. Dlorian recieved his Master in Geophysics and defended his PhD thesis on “What is Earthquakr?” finally working as an artist. Since 1998, Florian has taught Fine arts, cultural history, Music in Europe and the Americas. 2003-2011 he was the founding director of Y (Institute for transdisciplinarity) at Berne University of Arts and been a Professor for Transdisciplinarity at the Zurich University of the Arts, since 2011. He has exhibited internattionally in and in 2010 recieved the German Sount Art Prize.
Alice Hertzog is a social anthropologist – works on questions of migration, mobility and circulations.
Her first focus in the field of urban anthropology, questions the social transformations occurring with post-migrant cityscapes. The second focus, situated in museum anthropology, investigates the circulation of contested cultural heritage held in ethnographic museums. She is the incoming director of the Ethnographic Museum of Uni Zurich – where her research has played key role in restitution of the Benin Bronzes.
Her first focus in the field of urban anthropology, questions the social transformations occurring with post-migrant cityscapes. The second focus, situated in museum anthropology, investigates the circulation of contested cultural heritage held in ethnographic museums. She is the incoming director of the Ethnographic Museum of Uni Zurich – where her research has played key role in restitution of the Benin Bronzes.
Dr. Alice Twemlow is Professor by Special Appointment in the Wim Crouwel Chair of the History, Theory & Sociology of Graphic Design & Visual Culture in the Faculty of Humanities at University of Amsterdam and a Research Professor/Reader at the Royal Academy of Art The Hague (KABK). Based at the intersection of environmental humanities, design history, and practice-oriented research, Twemlow’s research addresses topics including: the geological concept of deep time to better understand the long-lasting environmental implications of the processes, values, and products of the design industry; sensory research methods such as walking, touching and listening; and the representational biases and imbalances in the preservation of graphic design heritage.