Let's start with something trusted and visible – the dominating dome of ETH's main building. From an architectural point of view it was once considered unconventional. Technically and aesthetically it was a risky undertaking, or at least one that wasn't successful at the first attempt, as it had to be renovated immediately following its construction in 1919.

Although not steep as domes go, it has nevertheless accomplished noteworthy objectives in its time. As a courageous attempt in modern concrete construction, it managed to stay within Zurich's planning protection laws regarding monuments; gradually it came to be seen as an almost natural part of Semper's original building and blended into the picture of the city, and, finally, following the requirements of computer-aided architectural design, it rapidly mutated to a CAAD centre for practising and teaching and received the playful moniker VISDOM.

The dome as an icon

Above all, though, the dome became a symbol for everything that the Federal Institute of Technology had to find room for under its roof. Today it stands as an icon – on the opening picture of countless PowerPoint presentations – quite simply for a versatile and dynamic technical science university. At the time of its construction the dome was the visible embodiment of the university's transition from the Federal Polytechnicum to the Federal Institute of Technology, which emancipated itself from the city and the cantonal sister university with full academic honours. When it was erected the dome set an accent for a national university, thus an indirect manifestation of educational policy that the fledgling federal state was putting on the political agenda to great effect in the mid-18th century.

"A depressing start"

The beginning of the 150-year history of ETH Zurich is seldom linked to its dome, but more to a date, the 15th October 1855. "Midday inauguration ceremony of the Federal Polytechnicum and in the evening the majority of students in a state of drunkenness. Indeed, a depressing and vexatious start," wrote Rector Deschwanden in his diary. Is it because of or despite its delirious start that the institution has become the star it is today?

Icon under construction: the dome of ETH ca. 1917/18. Picture: Library archive ETH Zurich. large

The (joyous) inauguration of the first winter semester has since been officially celebrated every 25 years at ETH to commemorate its beginnings and has overshadowed – perhaps not by chance – the other date. It was this other date that lastingly determined the conditions of construction of the emerging Polytechnikum, but it was of rather more political than academic importance.

Symbol of hope for a liberal future

The political act that can claim to be the beginnings of ETH, that allows us to talk of ETH as a federal institute of education, took place 150 years ago. On the 7th February 1854 parliament passed the "Federal law pertaining to the construction of a polytechnical university“. This decision was the result of years of work by sundry commissions, debates in both chambers of parliament, as well as of lively political debates and the publicistic participation of wide circles of the still young federal democracy. For the liberals, the Polytechnicum was quite simply the keystone of a new constitutional reality, which, above all, represented the form and institutionalisation of a newly drafted future. To avoid any misunderstanding, let it be said here that Deschwanden's spiritual hangover of the 16th October 1855 can be plausibly explained as an unintented secondary effect of a couple of well earned beers after a hard day's work.

Construction has continued on the "future promoting institution" for the past one and a half centuries – building, teaching, research, learning, calculating, writing and suffering, and its inhabitants have suffered, played truancy, worked and celebrated. It has been constructed in many stages, with ever-changing plans, often with considerable success and with new, sometimes controversial, goals. It has been renovated, adapted, changed, redesigned, demolished and extended. I think it is worthwhile to look closely, perhaps to reach a better understanding of the reasons that led to the realisation of this huge effort.

It's an exciting experience, to try to imagine the dome without its planning-law-conform robe, or the centre with and without the hill, to study the campus in a different competitive relationship or in different social contexts. The university with changing inhabitants and clients, with revolutionary changes in ways of communication, and with changing self-images. None of this changes the question of the "right" date for the Jubilee, but it might influence future renovations and constructions a little.