Moonwalk

Moonwalk
Luke Porter (wiki commons)
Moonwalk is a research project by Research Walkers aimed at improving safety and the feeling of safety in public spaces from a feminist perspective.
Henriette Lutz from Research Walkers
Zürich, Switzerland
About
Research Walkers believes in the social responsibility of architecture -Committed to spatial justice, diversity and making invisible voices visible.
Links
Team members
Lutz Henriette
Field of work
Architecture, Urban planning, Communication, Research, Other
Project submitted
2025

As Research Walkers, Henriette Lutz explores walking science and questions of diversity in public and private space. Being able to see and perceive ‘the different’ is a mediating task. What we actually see and perceive is individual and shaped by our personal experiences, our education, our gender and our background. Research Walkers developed the method of exploratory walking. This method allows things to be experienced, documented and finally transformed into action based on subjective and individual perceptions. This is how we make our (built) environment more sensitive and diverse.

Henriette Lutz studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich and has been working as an independent architect in theory and practice in Zurich since 2017. From 2018 to 2025, she researched and taught at the Bern University of Applied Sciences and has been part of the institute management at the Institute for Settlement, Architecture and Construction since 2024. Her work focuses on interdisciplinary and participatory research into housing construction with an emphasis on social and health perspectives and the involvement of citizen scientists.

As a board member of créatrices.ch – Women design Switzerland – she is committed to gender equality and, as a board member of Fussverkehr Schweiz, to walkable cities.

In 2025, Henriette Lutz completed her MAS in History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zurich, where she researched the emergence of public spaces from a multi-perspective approach. In autumn 2025, her book ‘Frauen(leben) im Neubühl – Vom Wohnen in einer Ikone’ (Women and women's lives in Neubühl – Living in an iconic place) will be published by Jovis Verlag as co-editor.

Since 2025, she has been teaching Gender Studies in Architecture at the Technical University of Munich and is beginning her dissertation project on the topic of needs-oriented architecture.

We walk into the nightfall. The feeling of having to step back, even though I want to step forward, is an expression of our insecurity. Let's empower ourselves with a feminist moonwalk!

Experimental perception walks on safety and feelings of security in public spaces encourage us to question our own socialisation, re-evaluate urban infrastructure and see familiar places with new eyes.

External circumstances such as the time of day or the weather change our perception of places. But social conditioning, individual experiences and our current state of mind also influence the way we perceive our surroundings. How do I feel in everyday places when it is dark? What strategies do I use to escape feelings of uncomfortable? During the walk, we address both subjective feelings of safety and objective safety.

Research Walkers is based on the theory of walking science developed by Annemarie and Lucius Burckhardt. According to this theory, (urban) landscape is understood as a construct. The perception of the (built) environment depends on individual experiences, one's own socialisation and thus also on education, culture, origin, gender, age, etc.

The ‘Moonwalk’ research project will involve different people in different locations in order to achieve universally valid results. The walks are only the beginning of the project. In combination with collective readings, mapping and workshops, measures will be developed that both support the authorities in increasing safety and empower the population to claim space.