Who develops, finances, and commissions architecture—and in whose interest? This lecture series examines the often-invisible forces that shape architectural production—the clients who commission, the contractors who build, and the capital flows that determine what gets realized. While architects are trained to focus on design, the political economy of construction is largely absent from architectural education—sustaining a disciplinary insularity that obscures architecture's deep entanglement with capital, labor, and power. Yet building is fundamentally contingent: dependent on forces beyond the designer's reach, shaped by actors whose decisions constrain and enable architecture far more than design intentions. The series invites scholars and practitioners …

TRUWANT+RODET+ Increasing the Leak Water has always shaped territories and cities, both visibly and invisibly. In mythology and storytelling, rivers and fountains bring life, healing, and uncontrollable power. Since modernism, we have pursued watertight environments, sealing interiors while buried streams and pipes persist beneath our streets and walls. When a leak appears, this fiction collapses. Forgotten infrastructures surface, and suppressed ecologies emerge—moss, humidity, micro-habitats. Leaks become reminders of water’s formative power, suggesting possible futures for architecture and urban space. Truwant + Rodet + is a Basel-based architecture practice founded in 2017. The diverse background of its partners informs a curious …

16.03.26 - The master's project by Zélie Cortès, carried out at the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST), is one of the winners of the Prix Durabilis 2025, a joint award of the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Université de Lausanne (UNIL). In the context of urban transition, her work presents an architectural approach to the adaptation and rehabilitation of residential complexes in the face of socio-climatic vulnerabilities. By 2060, multiple built-up areas will face unfavorable bioclimatic conditions due to urban heat. In this context, caring for and adapting our existing buildings—even the most ordinary ones—has …

05.03.26 - The Drawing Research Platform 2025 has been published on the Drawing Matter website, featuring hand drawings by ENAC Master’s students in architecture, civil engineering, and environmental engineering, produced during the ENAC Summer Workshop at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Central London. Developed with Drawing Matter, this one-week workshop explored hand drawing as a core tool in architecture and engineering, engaging the site as both a built and historically layered environment. Using the Drawing Matter Collection, students produced survey drawings not as representations, but as cognitive, corporeal, and constructive instruments for understanding existing conditions. Working outdoors and within the collection, the …

Proving that reused concrete components are reusable again! At the heart of Lausanne’s museum centre last month, I was privileged to showcase new structural and spatial possibilities using the same structural elements used in previous demonstrators of Maxence Grangeot's PhD thesis. These prefabricated wall elements made from concrete rubble, originally fabricated in collaboration with Prelco, were disassembled from the tower configuration, and combined again with cut concrete slabs, into a pavilion whose structural layout and connections were validated by NFIC, and installation carried out in collaboration with Marti. This public pavilion has been exhibited as part of Tracés/espazium first “Baukultur …

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.