Poetic Pragmatism

The Influence of Andrea Deplazes on Swiss Architecture (1997–2018)

Abstract

This article examines the influence of the teaching methodology of Professor Andrea Deplazes' chair at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) between 1997 and 2018, and how it has conditioned the production of contemporary Swiss architecture within a broader disciplinary ecosystem. In a historical period defined by abstraction and the primacy of the final image of the built object, Deplazes’ pedagogy proposed incorporating the fundamentals of construction as a system of thought and design. The text analyses the teaching structure of the first-year course (Grundkurs) and the reference book Constructing Architecture as significant milestones, which shifted academic interest towards material intelligence. The analysis identifies a reinforced correlation—rather than a strict causal determination—between the chair’s theory and the professional practice of those who studied under Deplazes, modulated by concurrent factors such as the Swiss constructive tradition, regulatory standards, and the craft culture of German-Swiss builders. The hypothesis proposes that his pedagogy generated an ethical and intellectual substrate best described as Poetic Pragmatism: a descriptive and analytical category defining an architecture of resistance where beauty is the inevitable consequence of constructive sincerity.