“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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

30.07.26 - Cities and communities have often developed around waterways. Today, they play a vital role in adapting to climate change and strengthening social bonds. Rivers are a key resource for food, directly through fishing or indirectly for irrigating crops. In the 19th century, when industrialization began, they became essential to run factories and revolutionize the economy, thus shaping the urban landscape. For that reason, humans have always established their settlements near rivers and have diverted their natural course to adapt to their needs. However, as cities keep growing, rivers reclaim the space that they occupied. “Rivers are very complex …

In July 2026, the Rolex Learning Center became a place of exchange around the Master Projects in Architecture at EPFL. Bringing together the final juries and the exhibition, the event offered a moment to reflect on a year of research, design, and experimentation, while opening this work to discussion with invited critics, faculty, students, and the public. The projects revealed a wide range of positions and methods. Developed independently, they nevertheless converged around shared concerns for contemporary architecture, engaging with questions of territory and public space, housing, industrial and cultural heritage, and architecture in mountain environments. Congratulations to all the …

In May 2026, the SG Building at EPFL hosted the End of the Year Show, bringing together the work developed across the Architecture's studios. Through models, drawings, research, installations, and debate, the exhibition offered a collective view of the diverse approaches that shape architectural education at EPFL. Rooted in a project-based approach that connects design with technical, social, and critical questions, the exhibited work explored contemporary ways of living, building, and imagining collective space. While each studio pursued its own methods and themes, together they reflected the breadth of investigations carried out throughout the academic year. Congratulations to all the …

This research-through-making project explores the use of innovative Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC), a high-performance material in which carbon fibres are embedded in a cementitious matrix cast with low-clinker-content binders, such as LC3. By combining these sustainable binders with the high efficiency of the reinforcing material, TRC significantly reduces the ecological footprint of construction by minimizing material usage and lowering energy consumption. This technology enables the creation of exceptionally thin, highly durable, and thus sustainable structures. The project aims to further investigate the structural, architectural, environmental, and social dimensions of TRC and its applications, particularly in the context of a new …

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.