“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 …

Is there a conflict between recommendations of «healthy daylighting» and the need of shadings for glare and overheating prevention? IDEAS Lunch Jan WIENOLD will be the speaker of the day and the title of his presentation is "Is there a conflict between recommendations of «healthy daylighting» and the need of shadings for glare and overheating prevention?". The axis Integrated Design, Architecture and Sustainability (IDEAS) is a joint initiative of both the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Integrated Performance in Design (LIPID) and Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST) of the ENAC School at EPFL. Later joined by the Structural Xploration Lab …

Transformation et Rénovation énergétique, intervention : FWD architectes, Intervenir dans l’existant Dans le cardre du cours AR 340 "Transformation et Rénovation énergétique" (BA5), FWD architectes SA - bureau d'architecture basé à Lausanne, donnera un aperçu de types d'interventions pratiquées sur le bâti existant. Il s'agit d'une conférence pour les étudiant·es que nous ouvrant à la communauté de l'ENAC.

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 …

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 …

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 …

A series of imagined film stills based on the transposition of the visual aesthetics of selected historically significant films into digitally modelled and rendered 3D scenes using Blender or Cinema 4D. The coursework investigated the translation of cinematic visual language into the digital environment. Each participant selected a historically significant film distinguished by its unique and influential aesthetic, analysed its characteristic visual principles, and subsequently transposed these qualities into a series of newly invented images. Rather than recreating existing film stills, the objective was to produce original ghost frames—fictional cinematic moments that never existed, yet convincingly belonged to the visual …

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.