Download the program 10-11 June 2025 10 June, 14:00 – 19:30 CET 11 June, 9:00 – 17:00 CET Foyer SG + Online EPFL, Lausanne Zoom ID: 611 0407 0355 The Habitat Research Center International PhD Seminar Learning from the South explores how various global urban and cultural landscapes address socio-ecological transitions. The seminar will take place on June 10-11, 2025 in Foyer SG showcasing PhD research from India, Brazil, Senegal, China, Ecuador, Mali, Colombia, Uruguay, Bolivia, Lebanon, and Iran and it’s open to the public. By South, this seminar refers to diverse regions historically impacted by colonial legacies and uneven …

11 June 2025, 12:30 - 14:00 SG Foyer, EPFL, Lausanne Habitat Research Center is inviting a world-renown author, Indian British activist, pacifist, and ecologist Satish Kumar as a Keynote speaker for a public speech on the International PhD Seminar - Learning from the South: Cultural Landscapes and Transnational Dialogues on Urbanization in Transition. About Satish Peace-pilgrim, life-long activist, and former monk, Satish Kumar is now 88, has been inspiring global change for over 50 years. Aged 9, Satish renounced the world and became a wandering Jain monk. Inspired by Gandhi, he decided at 18 that he could achieve more back …

In Imaginary Homelands, Salman Rushdie writes, “We are all migrants from a country called the past” (Rushdie, 1992). Rushdie suggests that the movement and transitions we experience are not only spatial but also temporal. The summer school aims to explore the fluidic nature of belonging, identity, and architectural materials which are central concepts in placemaking. The Summer School invites the participants to consider architecture as a dynamic process shaped by movement and transitions across human and non-human actors instead of static constructs. We aim to highlight movement as both a source and a method in architecture research. We look at …

ENAC Summer Workshop 2025 Drawing Research Platform 2025, London Londres, UK: 17 - 22 Août 2025 During a one-week Summer Workshop in the archives and on the site of Drawing Matter, Somerset, students will explore drawing as a fundamental tool in both architecture and engineering. Through research into the Drawing Matter Collection and the construction of survey drawings and spatial fabrications, drawing will be explored as a corporeal form of measuring and conceiving our environment. The Drawing Matter site, London, UK, offers a unique setting as drawing archive as well as testing ground for construction. The ENAC Summer Workshop Drawing …

CISBAT 2025 focuses on the crucial research topics of Operation, Well-Being, and Circularity that jointly drive the sustainable transition of our built environments. From innovative approaches to operational efficiency and occupant well-being, to the principles of circularity and resource management, our conference will offer a comprehensive exploration of these pressing issues and encourage interdisciplinary dialogue.

Entitled "Towards Bioclimatic Cities", the Forum des transitions urbaines will be held on September 12, 2025 in the Auditorium of Microcity, a branch of the EPFL in Neuchâtel (Switzerland). Organized jointly by the Ecoparc Association and the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST) of the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in partnership with the journal TRACÉS, the biennial event will approach this crucial theme for our built environment from different angles. online registration

03.06.25 - Switzerland's unique architecture competition guarantees anonymous, objective evaluation of architects. Does Switzerland’s approach really level the playing field and foster diversity? That's what Martin Peikert sets out to find out in his PhD thesis. He summarizes the issues at stake in this column published in three daily newspapers in French-speaking Switzerland. Switzerland’s system for running architectural design competitions has a number of distinctive features that set it apart from the ones used in other countries. Firms from any country can participate and, for reasons of objectivity, bids must be submitted anonymously. This approach is used in Switzerland for …

13.05.25 - Michela Bonomo examines in this column the ideology of the luxury seaside villa and shows its limits. Her column was published in three daily newspapers in French-speaking Switzerland. The concept of a seaside villa retreat is ancient, dating back to the Roman Empire, yet the idea of a summer Mediterranean vacation is a recent one. In an essay, Swiss architect Philippe Rahm explored the origins of the summer vacation by looking at it through the lens of science and medicine. As 19th-century scientists made major discoveries about the health benefits of the sea and sun and their role …

30.12.24 - The passing of David Jolly, architect and Professor at the Universidad EAD PUCV in Valparaíso, Chile, marks an immense loss. His stance, his remarkable body of work, and his research in the Ciudad Abierta in Chile deeply inspired students of EPFL. David Jolly: The intellectual and teaching legacy of the Open City movement The passing of David Jolly, architect and Professor at the Universidad EAD PUCV in Valparaíso, Chile, marks an immense loss. As the last guardian of the legacy of the Open City movement, his ethical and intellectual stance, his remarkable body of work, and his research …

17.12.24 - For her PhD thesis in architecture, Fiona del Puppo looked at the challenges young people face finding somewhere to live after leaving university. She outlines her observations in a column published in the Swiss French-language press. As part of my PhD thesis at EPFL’s Laboratory of Urban Sociology (LASUR), I looked at how the housing market is evolving in step with broader societal changes. My research, based on interviews with young people living in Geneva, shows that university leavers face unprecedented challenges when it comes to finding somewhere to live – and that the uncertainty associated with this …

Water design is of major importance today. The risks associated with water and climate change are a cause of global concern. The number of projects dealing with water-related issues is virtually endless, so pervasive that they play the role of connectors among coalitions of different players, disciplines, performances and ways of thinking. Water Designs, the title of the exhibition, considers not only water as a topic, but the project that water itself designs, according to its rationalities, logics and behaviours. The water project is the one that shapes our territories and our living space over the longue durée. Water is …

En aval du lac Léman, la ville de Genève profite d'une situation unique dans l'Arc lémanique. Le resserrement des rives du lac forme une rade que la ville structure jusqu'à reformer le Rhône qui devient alors son émissaire. Ce coeur liquide, ou temenos, selon la formulation d'André Corboz, est ancré dans la culture genevoise comme l'un des symboles majeurs de la ville. Depuis la fin du XIXe siècle, la rade entame une mutation de sa condition portuaire vers un espace de détente qu'elle peine à devenir. Ce projet a pour vocation de sortir les quais de la crise identitaire qu'ils …

EPFL architecture graduates, Vincent Digneaux, Solène Guisan and Vincent Kastl, were crowned winners of the Sustainable is Beautiful student architecture prize for their modular footbridge over the Chamberonne river. Designing the structure, which serves as both a crossing and a meeting place, gave them their first taste of life as an architect. Several years ago, the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST) at EPFL’s School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC) launched Sustainable is Beautiful, a competition run in partnership with public and private organizations involved in green-transition projects, to help equip budding architects for their future role.

WINNER OF THE 2023 RIBA CHARLES JENCKS AWARD

The Dogma practice, founded in 2002 by Pier Vittorio Aureli, associate professor at the EPFL Architecture Department (ENAC), and Martino Tattara, has been awarded the prestigious Charles Jencks 2023 Prize by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

Created in 2003 to reward an individual (or office) who has recently made a major contribution to both the theory and practice of architecture, this prestigious prize has distinguished architects such as Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron over the years.

Housing is a major contributor to Switzerland's carbon footprint and energy consumption, but it is also a basic need. Research on climate change mitigation strategies has so far paid insufficient attention to households' preferences and their contribution to housing sustainability. Depicting residential preferences requires an understanding of the multilevel, context-specific, and interrelated determinants of the match between households and dwellings, which are made explicit in the residential mobility process.