Science City
Science City expresses ETH’s mission of contributing to the integral concept and design of the university of the future. This includes the careful utilization of environmental and financial resources, how to evolve and renew a university, and the ongoing dialogue between society and science.
A university campus for the 21st century
Science City is one part of an ETH-wide strategy for the campuses ETH Zentrum, ETH Hönggerberg and ETH World. The focus here is on people - teachers, students, researchers and staff - as well as the inhabitants of Zurich and visitors to Science City. The site of Science City will be a favorite place for the public because science can be encountered and experienced there in different ways. Science City will offer attractive events relating to science, culture and recreation. Science City strives to be a new kind of interface between the scientific community and the public. Science City will be an open door interconnecting science and society, an urban center of think culture.
Evolving the vision
While the master plan lays out the design framework for the development of Science City, the creative and critical contributions of all concerned, both within and external to the ETH, are needed in order to turn the Hönggerberg campus into a place where the scientific community can come together with society and industry.
Science City is a strategic project for the ETH and a platform for various associated projects of the ETH, such as: graduate schools, international collaborations with leading research institutes around the world, high-tech infrastructures, implementing the research directions of information sciences and life sciences, offering a cultural environment, offering housing on the campus, introducing and establishing new models for financing research projects and public functions in Science City, and, most importantly, an intense dialogue between the ETH and society.
Including all stakeholders in a joint planning process is new and experimental, but has proven its worth in practice. In addition, ETH Zurich has launched an international competition to get ideas on sustainable planning for Science City. Winning submissions will complement the sustainable planning guidelines already established for Science City, such as the ambitious energy concept.
Profile of Speaker – Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmitt
Gerhard Schmitt (born 1953) is Vice-President of ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Professor for Information Architecture. He directs the development of ETH’s strategy and planning in cooperation with the 15 scientific departments and central administration. He is responsible for Human Resources and for providing the infrastructure for ETH’s 8,000 employees and 12,700 students in more than 200 buildings on two major campuses. In 2000 he initiated the development of a third, virtual campus, named ETH World with an international master plan competition. It provides the information infrastructure for learning and teaching, research and services. Since then it has become Switzerland’s largest wireless LAN. In 2003 he initiated the concept for Science City, ETH’s new campus in Zurich; in 2004, the development of the master plan, and in 2006 an international competition for the best integrated urban scale sustainability concept.
Professor Schmitt established the Computer Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) curriculum, research program and infrastructure at ETH. He now concentrates on the definition and design of information architecture and knowledge visualization. His research focuses on the development of intelligent design support systems using artificial intelligence methods. He was instrumental in the definition of the Blue-C research project at ETH, a next generation Virtual Reality Environment.
He taught Computer-Aided Architectural Design and conducted CAAD research at Carnegie Mellon University from 1984 to 1988. He was Visiting Professor at the GSD at Harvard University in 1993 and 1994, at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, at DTU, the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby and at the Technical University of Delft. Major research and academic contacts exist with MIT, Sydney University and EPF Lausanne.
He was Dean of the Faculty and Department of Architecture at ETH 1994-1996, president of ETH’s Informatics Commission 1989-1997, and president of the Swiss Computer Graphics association 1996-1998. He is Vice-President of the board of the HMT, the Zurich Academy for Music, Theater and Ballet, and past president of the foundation board of the Studienzentrum Pfäffikon, a distance learning university institute.
Gerhard Schmitt has authored numerous articles and several books, the latest being Information Architecture, Architektur mit dem Computer, and Architectura et Machina. He received his Doktor-Ingenieur and Diplom-Ingenieur Degrees from the Technical University of Munich and the Master of Architecture Degree from the University of California in Berkeley.