All of a sudden, the campus was empty
For two months, ETH Zurich operated in emergency mode. During this time, the vast majority of buildings, lecture halls, laboratories and offices remained empty. Two photographers visited ETH in April in order to capture a largely deserted campus with only a few people still on site.
How quickly the world can change! Not long ago, the Hönggerberg campus, comprising more than 12,000 students and staff, was as lively as any city district – and on the central campus there were spots such as the Polyterrasse, where university members gathered alongside tourists who had come for a view of the old town and the mountains.
Then the unthinkable happened: the coronavirus was declared an “extraordinary situation”, and in March ETH switched to emergency mode. For almost all students, researchers and staff, this meant working from home. In a matter of days, the ETH buildings emptied. Their usual hustle and bustle made way for an eerie silence.
What that had previously been the stuff of science fiction films or dystopian graphic novels was now a reality on campus: deserted cityscapes, streets and garages without cars, bus stops without people, restaurants without guests, bistro refrigerators without drinks, fitness equipment without athletes, lecture halls without students, laboratories without researchers and offices without employees. Barely conceivable in the past before the crisis, this image remains almost incomprehensible to this day.
See the empty campus and ETH members on site
For those ETH members who have been working from home - and thus far away from the campus -, the Corporate Communications department commissioned two freelance photographers – Alessandro Della Bella and Nicola Pitaro – to visit the Hönggerberg and central campuses in April.
Their work paints a picture of the months when ETH operated in emergency mode for all those who were not there to witness it in person. We have published a selection of their photographs in five categories: “The Hönggerberg Campus”, “The Central Campus”, “Students and Education”, “COVID-19 Research and Research Infrastructure” and “ETH Employees”.
The photos of the two empty campuses give an impression of what it feels like when even on a clear and sunny day, no one is on the Polyterrasse, no one is hurrying through the corridors of the ETH main building and the reading rooms of the libraries are just as deserted as the lecture halls and the student workplaces in the foyers.
This creates a peculiar effect: Suddenly attention is drawn to the shadows cast on the walls by the incoming sunlight, where otherwise attention was focused mainly on the people and their conversations.
Window on to unfamiliar perspectives
The deserted spaces provide a window on to unfamiliar perspectives and allow viewers to see spatial relationships that remain hidden when there are dozens of people on campus.
Yet at the same time, the pictures also bear witness to the full scope of this unwelcome state of affairs, particularly in places where people usually gather. In restaurants and cafeterias, for example, individual entrances have been cordoned off, chairs are piled up on tables, refrigerators have been almost completely emptied and coffee cups are wrapped in plastic. Closed for business.
And the mood in the sports centres is much the same: the fitness equipment is sitting unused, while cordons mark off the sports facilities and certain equipment.
Does this mean the whole campus is deserted? Not quite.
A few people remain on site: employees are working at the Campus Info counters and the ISC Service Center. Just like the library staff, they are there to ensure that basic services continue to function. Caretakers and building services staff are also on duty to ensure that the buildings are not damaged, as are the security service and the Alarm Organisation’s Emergency Desk.
In the HPH lecture hall building, experimental physicists can be seen preparing a lecture in which they demonstrate experiments to students on their screens at home, while in various laboratories ETH researchers are investigating how the coronavirus might be contained and how COVID-19 may one day be prevented, inhibited or perhaps cured.
Even in laboratories such as the high-voltage laboratory, which are switched off during emergency operation, lab managers check the equipment. In the Student Project House, students with special permission are busy manufacturing medical products for hospitals, including the Plexiglas face shields, while others help out on site in hospitals or pharmacies.
And last but not least, the cleaning staff not only keep the ETH buildings clean during this extended period of inactivity – even including the dome of the main building – but they also disinfect surfaces such as door handles in order to prevent the virus settling in at ETH.
In conclusion: ETH is still very much alive – even during emergency mode, or rather, because of it. Be it as it may, at least whoever browses through the photos will learn many things they didn’t know about our university.
