“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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.