Viral Balcony

In 2020, the freedom of movement of many citizens around the world was restricted. As part of the attempt to mitigate the effects of the covid-19 virus, people were advised to remain within their private domains and restrict their use of public spaces to the bare minimum. Keeping citizens out of the public sphere in our contemporary societies was, fortunately, not an idea that was simply accepted. On the contrary, citizens around the world searched for alternative ways of accessing the public sphere, for new ways of meeting one another and tactics for sharing, caring and supporting others: for different ways of commoning. The digital sphere offered many new opportunities to encounter, exchange and collaborate. Also in the analogue world, in our neighbourhoods and cities, alternative forms of contact developed. One architectural element played a key role: the balcony.

Some years ago, we started within the frame of Rem Koolhaas’ project ‘The Elements of Architecture’ an intense investigation into the architectural element of the balcony. In 2020, we continued this research at the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design of the gta, ETH Zürich. We explored how, in the era of covid 19, the balcony proved to be one of the most powerful architectural elements of the city: individual podium of collectivity, private parlour of public presence, and personal lighthouse of the commons.

We started to gather visual material related to collective balcony practices on our Instagram account, @avermaete_gta_ethz, catalogued under the hashtag #viralbalcony. Beginning with a call for followers to submit their own balcony experiences, this archive brought together photographs and videos that were widely shared alongside more intimate vignettes from the pandemic. Submissions covered a physically distanced Shabbat on the balconies of Zurich Wiedikon, clapping and cheering for first responders from Toronto’s balconies, and white flags hung in honour of healthcare workers in the empty streets of Belgium. Social media, in this way, became a means of assembling a crowd-sourced archive of the balcony in a crisis, from global users in real-time. 

Simultaneously, the hashtags allowed a set of indirect and surprising analogies to emerge – including works of art, film stills, historical curiosities and cartoons – that revealed the changing role of the balcony in society. Some of these images have been collected here on our website, under the “stories collected” tab. 

This research also led to the publication of a journal article, “The Viral Balcony: Or the Vicissitudes of an Urban Element in Times of Pandemic”, published in gta Papers 5: Social Distance. This essay was authored collectively by members of the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design.