Public Projects

Public Projects is a collaboration founded by architects Laura Bruder and Zarah Fahrni,
working between Zurich, Paris, Stuttgart, and Cairo. Educated at ETH Zurich, TU Delft, and
EPFL respectively, they share a deep commitment to spatial justice. Their practice engages in
architectural strategies that activate the built environment through collaboration, reuse, and
participatory processes, focusing on shared access and the negotiation of space. Grounded,
playful, and politically aware, their work operates at the intersection of research, design, and s

Laura explores context-sensitive transformation strategies and performative approaches to
reactivate spatial and cultural narratives. She is founder of her studio LAB, focusing on adaptive
reuse and teaches at the transformation chair of Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design.
Working across architecture, scenography, and writing, her work investigates how minimal, site-
specific interventions can engage with existing spatial and social dynamics, shift perception, and
enable collective appropriation. She has collaborated with EM2N, Dogma, and Schmidlin, and is
particularly interested in combining critical research with experiential outcomes.

Zarah’s focus lies at the intersection of socio-political and economic dynamics and spatial
production. She is a strong advocate for bottom-up processes and appropriable spaces,
directing her practice toward resource-constrained contexts. She is currently based in Paris,
pursuing a post-master’s degree in Recherches en architecture, and in Zurich, where she
practices as an architect, after five years as a project lead at WALDRAP. Her recent
collaboration with CLUSTER in Cairo on heat-mitigation strategies reflects her interest in urban
resilience and climate-adaptive design.