1:33/1:2 One of the most interesting public manifestations of learning in architecture are books about student‘s work. This lecture will present 1:33/1:2 new publication that showcases work by EPFL students. This book is exemplary in representing how learning architecture can be both a school reality and something that continues to inspire the architectural community at large. “About architectural tomography, about the importance of the drawing, about the book presentation 1:33/1:2, and about a special bookselling” Special book sale 1:33/1:2 will be available for purchase at a special reduced student price exclusively on the evening of the lecture. A special opportunity …

Tuesday 13 October 2026 5.30pm – Guided tour of the exhibition Do Robots Dream of Construction Sites? What if robots didn’t replace us, but worked alongside us? Robots are capable of assembling, analysing, experimenting and learning from their mistakes. Could they take on construction work without replacing human labour? Research carried out by the CRCL – Lab for Creative Computation at EPFL explores a form of collaboration between humans and machines that departs from the traditional promise of automation. It opens the way to more inclusive building sites and non-standardised, more environmentally friendly architecture that goes beyond the mere logic …

Collective Figurations of Baukultur Architectural representation has often dissociated its production from its product, trapped in loops of identification, reproduction and mimesis which have only increased under technocapitalism. Today, our cities and environments are measured to the detail and seemingly overrepresented through proliferating digital twins, predictive models and simulations, indicators and benchmarks. These operative visualizations which reduce the world to computable data, no longer merely describe reality: they organize, mobilize, and activate matter. They function as automated, asignifying spatial infrastructures, while progressively dispensing with a symbolic mediation increasingly deemed unnecessary and, just as often, a problematic source of ambiguity. Digital …

“To emphasize (...) dubious uses of risk is perverse, a dirty way of talking about a clean scientific subject” Mary Douglas, Risk and Blame, 36. As the baseline condition of so many territories shaped by extractive industries, administrative delay, and climatic instability, risk is prevalent. Yet ecological risk—pollution, fires, floods, heatwaves, droughts—is still presented as problems to be solved rather than conditions to be inhabited. This also speaks to an outsourcing of risk through externalized consequences of spatial injustice. Banks, developers, material supply chains, normative institutions, subcontracting hierarchies —all contend with calculated risk. This edition of Pressure Points asks us …

Building for Disassembly Temporary Sports Halls, Huts and a Hotel Growing student numbers and the need to renovate numerous school facilities prompted the Canton of Zurich to seek a temporary solution for sports facilities. Each building is intended to remain at a given location between three to fifteen years, until it is either relocated or stored for future reassembly. pool Architektur responded by designing a prefabricated timber construction system that enables a variety of spatial configurations and appearances, allowing for careful integration into the surrounding environment. Other projects such as the room-within-a-room installation for “El Gato Muerto” or the temporary …

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 …

11.08.26 - What if robots were increasingly in need of us? Archizoom and the CRCL laboratory at EPFL propose an exhibition to invite visitors to rethink the automation of construction sites, exploring robotic arms, recycled timber and the confidence to co-create with increasingly intelligent machines. Despite decades of technological promises, construction remains one of the least automated sectors — and one where the physical demands of the work remain the most intense. In light of this, the CRCL – Lab for Creative Computation, led by Professor Stefana Parascho, is exploring a different approach. Rather than opposing robots and workers, this …

09.07.26 - Prof. Stefana Parascho and Prof. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes have been selected to organise the 2027 EPFL Latsis Symposium. The Latsis International Foundation grants CHF 40K to one head of unit at EPFL, or a group of heads of units, per year for the organization of a scientific symposium. EPFL will host In the Same Room: Technology and Critique in the Built Environment, a symposium convened by Prof. Stefana Parascho (CRCL) and Prof. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes (RIOT) that brings architects, engineers, social scientists, historians, and theorists into the same room to confront one of the defining tensions in contemporary architecture: how …

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 …

06.07.26 - For almost two decades, Luca Pattaroni has been studying alternative and countercultural communities at EPFL’s Urban Sociology Laboratory (LASUR). His research asks what these models of coexistence and collective living might teach the rest of society. When asked what question drives his work, Luca Pattaroni, who co-heads LASUR at EPFL, is unequivocal: “How do people and communities, with all their diversity and differences, learn to live side by side in a city?” Pattaroni specializes in what are often labeled the “margins” of society. Yet he sees alternative communities, countercultural movements, activist and artistic circles, squats, the homeless, migrants …

11.06.26 - Two master's projects completed within the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST) are among the winners of the 2026 FEB Distinction awarded by the Groupe spécialisé pour la conservation des ouvrages (GCO) of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA). The master's project "Racines urbaines", developed by Lucile Charamel, received an award, while Zélie Cortès' project, entitled "Canopé sociale", received an honorable mention. This distinction annually recognizes academic projects that address, in an exemplary manner, issues related to the management, adaptation, and conservation of existing buildings. Since its foundation in 1994, the GCO has provided an …

During a one-week Summer Workshop at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in Central London, students will explore drawing as a fundamental tool in architecture and engineering, engaging with the site as both a built environment and a historically transformed place. Developed in collaboration with Drawing Matter, London, the workshop integrates hands-on drawing with research into the Drawing Matter Collection, a unique archive of architectural drawings. Students will construct survey drawings—understood as instruments for potentially transforming existing conditions—while investigating drawing as a corporeal practice of measuring, analyzing, and questioning spatial, tectonic, urban, and material articulation, as well as the notion of place. Drawing …

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.