The Architecture Hub gives access to the latest news of EPFL Architecture within the ENAC faculty, as well as presenting teaching and research programs, governance and people at the core of the community. The organizational structure of EPFL Architecture and the EPFL ecosystem is described in the glossary.
Chliriet Secondary School Building What makes for a good learning environment for young people? The presentation on the Chliriet Secondary School explores how spatial layout, landscape, architectural design, and color schemes can shape everyday school life. The long, narrow wooden building frames a spacious schoolyard featuring the existing multipurpose hall. The classrooms face the open landscape, while the hallways and group rooms offer views of the schoolyard. The colorful interior creates a vibrant and distinctive learning environment. Elli Mosayebi, EMI Architekt*innen Elli Mosayebi’s career is defined by the close relationship between practice, research, and teaching. Since 2004, she has co-directed …
NIGHT OF THE MUSEUMS Saturday 26 September 2026 2pm-midnight – Exhibition open 3pm / 6pm / 9pm – Guided tours in French 2pm–9pm – Social Contract 4.0, an interactive robotic installation by the artist Madeline Gannon The Museum Night will be celebrating its 25th anniversary. For this special edition, the museums are pulling out all the stops and transforming the city into one huge party: exhibitions, performances, talks, surprises and unique experiences will punctuate the day and evening, from 2 pm until midnight. At Archizoom, we’re offering an immersive experience surrounded by robotic arms and construction sites with the exhibition …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.