Announcement: Coffee Lecture "Rebuilding from Rubble: Material Reuse and Recycling in Postwar Architecture"
On the 2nd of February, we are hosting the coffee lecture “Rebuilding from Rubble: Material Reuse and Recycling in Postwar Architecture“.
In the aftermath of World War II, app. 170 million m3 of rubble has been strewn across urban areas of Poland. According to calculations from the period, this amount of debris could suffice to rise a ten-meter wall, which would encircle the country's postwar border… more than twice. However, If correctly processed, the same amount of rubble could have allowed to build app. 1 room for every inhabitant of all the Polish cities.
The lecture will link the projects involving building material reuse and rubble recycling presented at the exhibition “ETH with Ukraine” with the practice and knowledge of building with rubble developed during reconstruction in the wake of WWII. The lecture will highlight the central role of building material reuse and recycling in the architecture of the late 1940s Europe.
Dr. Adam Przywara is an architectural historian and curator. His current postdoctoral research project at the University of Fribourg investigates transnational networks of building material reuse supporting wartime reconstruction in Ukraine. He earned his PhD (2022) from the University of Manchester for a dissertation on the history of ruins and rubble in the postwar socialist reconstruction of Warsaw. He curated numerous architecture history exhibitions, most recently 'Rising from Rubble: Warsaw 1945-1949' at the Museum of Warsaw in 2023. His research interests focus on the changes in the materiality of twentieth-century architecture, and building material reuse in contemporary and historical construction.
The lecture is organised as a part of the exhibition "ETH with Ukraine - Exchanging Knowledge for a Sustainable Future".
📆 February 2, Friday
🕝 13:00
🏛️ Main building of ETH Zurich, main hall
📍 Rämistrasse 101, 8006 Zürich
🗣️ Language: English
🆓 Entrance free
Photographs will be taken at this event. If you do not want to be shown in published photos, please, contact us.