BAUKULTUR: A EUROPEAN GENEALOGY

The concept of Baukultur has firmly taken its place in the European debate on architecture, cities, and landscapes (Davos Declaration, 2018). It has become a well-established research topic in Switzerland (National Research Programme “Baukultur” (NRP 81), 2025–2030), despite the fact that its roots have yet to be thoroughly debated. Due to its topicality, the term is widely accepted and taken for granted, without questioning the significance of the preceding experiences it encompasses.

From October 2025 to January 2026, the Steering Committee of the National Research Programme “Baukultur” (NRP 81) including Paola Viganò (President and Professor at EPFL), Pierre Caye (members of the Committee and research director at the CNRS) and Andri Gerber (members of the Committee and Professor at ZHAW) organises a series of sessions, to outline the European genealogy of a culture of the built environment. This cycle of public events, to be attended in person or online, is jointly set in collaboration with the Habitat Research Center (HRC) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur (ZHAW).

Rather than searching for the origins of Baukultur, these sessions invite guest speakers, NRP 81 project teams, researchers, and students to explore the numerous ramifications that contribute to understanding its construction and emergence. From a Foucauldian perspective, the sequence of these complementary sessions aims to retrace the successive or parallel paths that led to the recognition of Baukultur’s shared principles and values.