On October 1st, 1970, the Kommissie Speciale Aktiviteiten (KSA, or Special Activities Committee) was established within TU Eindhoven’s Architecture, Building and Planning Department. Created with the ambition to expand the school’s architectural horizons and, effectively, create its architecture culture, its mandate was to organize exhibitions, excursions, lectures, and other events related to architecture. Promptly, the Committee established a profile based on a continuous questioning of architecture’s boundaries. Organizing exhibitions and lectures, it promoted the idea of intellectual discussion and confrontation as the basic elements to develop and elevate the department’s architecture culture beyond the prosaic platitudes of technique.

By 1980, the KSA had already organized over 100 exhibitions, most of which engaging architecture from adjacent fields. From visual arts to typography, from history to foreign architecture, the KSA’s eclectic exhibitions promoted a variety of ideas that were often at odds with dominant discourse. In the mid-1990s, the committee changed its title to KaSA, only to adopt its current title of CASA vertigo in 2004, when the department occupied the former chemistry laboratory tower, then also renamed Vertigo building.

Throughout its over 50 years of continuous activity, CASA has adapted and changed, but its main objective remains the same: to expand the department’s architectural horizons and elevate its architecture culture.