“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 …

We are delighted to invite you to the launch of DRAG(UE): Tools for Queer-Feminist Pedagogies of the Built Environment, at Archizoom EPFL on Thursday November 5 from 18h30 on. This publication is dedicated to three years of teaching the DRAG(UE): Performativity and Environment, an ENAC teaching unit. After two years of working behind closed doors as a team of six, we are delighted to share with you these pages of archives, experiences, and tools documenting the work of students and invited guests. The discussion will be led by several generations of activists from the DRAG nebula, founded in January 2021, …

“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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Manfredo Tafuri was one of the most influential architectural historians of the twentieth century, and his work continues to shape the landscape of architectural history and theory. This anthology presents—for the first time—a carefully curated selection of essays and interviews spanning his entire career, from 1964, the year in which Tafuri decided to focus exclusively on architectural history, to 1994, the year of his untimely death. These texts—most translated into English for the first time—reveal the extraordinary range of Tafuri’s scholarship, ranging from topics as diverse as the critique of architectural ideology and capitalist development, to the contradictions of the …

Le cours interroge l’avenir des villages face à l'injonction de densification vers l'intérieur, inscrite dans la Loi suisse sur l’aménagement du territoire (LAT) depuis 2013. Si ce modèle s’adapte aux grandes villes et aux agglomérations, il apparaît moins pertinent pour les territoires villageois, caractérisés par une urbanisation discontinue et un fort lien au paysage. Ces espaces, dominés par le non-bâti et par une socialité de proximité, ont renforcé leur attractivité dans les contextes de crises sanitaires et climatiques. Ils disposent de ressources importantes pour la régulation environnementale et sociale, mais présentent aussi des fragilités, notamment en matière de mobilité et …

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.