Fifty years ago today, the ETH architecture department was relocated from the city centre to Hönggerberg, where, since the early 1960s, stood the new ETH campus designed by architect and city planner Albert Heinrich Steiner. The decision to relocate the school of architecture from the city to the greenfield was strongly resisted from within. In 1974, nineteen professors filed a complaint with the Swiss Federal Institute Council, which was dismissed. 

The 1976 move of the entire architecture division into the new HIL building, designed by Max Ziegler, had one undisputed advantage. For the first time the entire faculty, design studios, and recently established research institutes were brought together under one roof. However, the new headquarters were heavily criticised by their users. Professor Heinz Ronner compared the atmosphere of the HIL to a mediocre office building in no-man’s land. He repeatedly bemoaned that students would miss out on the demonstration material provided by the city. Despite Zieglers efforts to the contrary, the HIL’s smoked mirrored façade evoked the image of a “crystal palace”, communicating inaccessibility despite being a public building. For journalist and ZAS-member Rudolf Schilling, the building resembled “a secluded technocrats’ fortress”, while Professor Bernhard Hoesli compared it to “a submarine, where things become eerie as soon as the quiet hum of the machinery stops.” Fifty years later, the HIL – now with enough memories to be loved, however reluctantly – is again examined closely by students and faculty throughout its transformation into a Living Lab.