Against Research–Decolonizing Research AR-693, 2 Credits 17 - 18 November 2023 9:00 CET; BP4234 - 4th Floor BP, Blue City Lab Chaired by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes with Kathlyn Kao "The academy needs the figure of the black: we are the analytical sites, the data, the experiment, the security guards, the cleaners, the administrative assistants, the nonnormative teachers, through which so much scholarship moves.” Katherine McKittrick. Dear Science and Other Stories. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2021. 'Decolonizing’, a term fashionably peppered across curricula, is a contested concept, weaponized and instrumentalized in political battles across global academia—and beyond. What does doing decolonized …

07.09.26 - The book Rhodanie urbaine, edited by Prof. Emmanuel Rey of the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST), is published today by MétisPresses. To celebrate its publication, a book launch event will take place on 23 September 2026 at f’ar – forum d’architectures de Lausanne, as part of the Rhône Vivant!exhibition. The event will feature presentations by Laurent Allemann, Sara Formery, Bertrand Stofleth and Prof. Emmanuel Rey, who will explore selected aspects of the book, highlighting the Rhône as a driver of urbanity and a catalyst for resilience. Reflecting territorial, regional and local questions raised by the past …

24.08.26 - EPFL’s very first buildings and their surrounding areas were just classified as historical monuments. In connection with this, the School has entered into an agreement with Vaud Canton and the ETH Board to preserve its emblematic 20th-century architecture while enabling the Lausanne campus to keep changing with the times. It is the start of a new chapter for EPFL’s Lausanne campus. Today, EPFL and Vaud Canton announced that the campus’s original buildings, constructed between 1969 and 1984, and their surrounding areas have been classified as historical monuments. This recognition of the School’s architectural heritage has also led to …

07.07.26 - Encouraging people to embrace alternatives to the car – still the dominant mode of travel in Switzerland – means factoring human decision-making into the equation. Swiss people are still deeply attached to their cars. Figures from the Federal Statistical Office bear this out: between 2005 and 2015, around half of all journeys were made by private motorized transport – a category that includes cars, motorcycles, scooters and similar vehicles. Even though Switzerland has an extensive public transport network, habits are seemingly slow to change, and they vary across the country’s cultural and language regions. In German-speaking Switzerland, where …

“Rhythm is not a measurement: it is a vision of the world.” Octavio Paz An exploration of how to navigate the demands of modern life through the lens of rhythm. We live in a world increasingly saturated – with signs, norms, objects, and demands – and that overstimulation contributes to our daily sense of alienation. In this manifesto, the authors argue that the path to emancipation lies in our capacity to reclaim political agency over our rhythms, both individual and collective. A Manifesto for a Rhythm Politics explores the fundamentally spatial and territorial dimensions of time, as well as the …

Au cœur des politiques publiques, des rapports sociaux et des imaginaires, l’automobile a modelé de multiples façons l’histoire du XXe siècle et continue à façonner notre présent. De Roland Barthes à Luc Boltanski, en passant par ­Georges Friedmann, Alfred Sauvy et André Gorz, de nombreux penseurs ont écrit sur ce « fait social total » – économique, ­culturel, social, urbanistique, environnemental, psycho­logique, etc. –, en faisant à la fois un révélateur et un observatoire privilégié des dynamiques sociales contemporaines. Regroupant les contributions de près de 20 chercheurs en sciences sociales, cet ouvrage propose un retour sur les travaux ayant documenté …

Les villes sont des mosaïques vivantes : elles rassemblent des personnes aux origines, aux pratiques religieuses, aux langues, aux statuts économiques et aux pratiques quotidiennes multiples. Cette diversité, loin d’être une exception, constitue désormais la condition normale de la vie urbaine. Pourtant, les pratiques de planification continuent souvent de traiter les habitant·e·s à travers une seule dimension, au risque de figer et de simplifier à l’excès des réalités sociales infiniment plus complexes. Cet ouvrage propose de repenser la ville à partir de ses différences et de leur entrelacement. Il invite à concevoir un urbanisme inclusif, capable de reconnaître les multiples …

Beautifully designed publication. In the first 23 pages section you can tear off the pages so that the floor plans and drawings become readable. Between 2020 and 2023, 974 students beginning their studies at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne embarked on their architectural journey by engaging in a 12-week spatial, constructive, and conceptual investigation within the architectural tomography course. The course, led by Tiphaine Abenia and Jo Taillieu and held in the LIF laboratory, resulted in the investigation of 44 houses over four years. Architectural tomography, as a conceptual and operational device, has the capacity to reveal the spatial and …

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.