Acts of responding to place First-year architecture students re-measure the site and its affordances. In continuity with the 1st semestre the students will produce a constellation of resonant possibilities for the new site of Battelle Tambourine in Carouge. The proposed architecture will engage the notion and finding of the first semestre: bodies, senses, territories, detail, program, story threw spacial proposition.

This session explores successful approaches to heritage preservation in Africa through the intersection of architectural research, conservation practice, and documentary filmmaking. It is the launch event of South North Lab (SoNo) at EPFL. Aziza Chaouni and Stephen Battle will present the collaborative rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of Old Fourah Bay College in Freetown, supported by international heritage organizations and SoNo Lab research. Filmmaker Barmmy Boy will preview his forthcoming documentary on the project. The session concludes with short films on African heritage and a discussion moderated by Akshar Gajjar.

28.11.25 - The EPFL Architecture Studio TEXAS project was awarded the Swiss Arc Award 2025 in the Next Generation category. Congratulations to all the students and the teaching team involved for their outstanding work ! Hétérotopies Taking as a starting point the concept of heterotopia developed by Michel Foucault, the students envisioned the transformation of a housing block built in 1955 in Sarcelles, on the outskirts of Paris. With a careful and committed approach to preserving this modern heritage, they explored ways to extend the spatial and material qualities of these dwellings. Each group developed a collective housing project based …

12.11.25 - For her EPFL master’s project in architecture, Léa Guillotin outlined a plan for restoring an industrial district in Lausanne while promoting the reuse of construction materials. Léa Guillotin, who grew up in a village in Normandy, developed a taste for architecture early on. She got her first experience with it as a teenager, when she helped her parents renovate their family home. Then an optional architecture class she took during a high-school exchange year in the US convinced her of her calling. After graduating, she applied to EPFL so that she could study not just the theory and …

21.10.25 - As part of his current thesis in architecture at EPFL, Clément Cattin is analyzing how to adapt sloping sites to the challenges of sustainable cities. He summarizes the issues in an article published in three French-language dailies. Urban densification projects are rife across Switzerland. But public enthusiasm remains muted and political pushback is on the rise. So how can we continue to meet demand for housing without eroding quality of life in our cities? For my PhD research in architecture and urban sciences at EPFL, I decided to focus on neighborhoods built on slopes. Unobstructed views, favorable microclimates …

This documentary on the 2025 Master's projects at EPFL Architecture offers a glimpse into the topics addressed and investigated by master’s students: resources and craftsmanship, issues related to urban and territorial scales, social housing and individual housing, and interventions in existing buildings, including transformation, rehabilitation and renovation, are among the topics covered during the PDM. The PDM year at EPFL offers a rare freedom: the choice of one's own subjects and collaborations. It is a crucial moment when everyone takes a stand, not only in their studies but also in relation to the role of the architect. The video does …

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.