Collective Figurations of Baukultur Architectural representation has often dissociated its production from its product, trapped in loops of identification, reproduction and mimesis which have only increased under technocapitalism. Today, our cities and environments are measured to the detail and seemingly overrepresented through proliferating digital twins, predictive models and simulations, indicators and benchmarks. These operative visualizations which reduce the world to computable data, no longer merely describe reality: they organize, mobilize, and activate matter. They function as automated, asignifying spatial infrastructures, while progressively dispensing with a symbolic mediation increasingly deemed unnecessary and, just as often, a problematic source of ambiguity. Digital …

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, …

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 …

09.07.26 - Prof. Stefana Parascho and Prof. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes have been selected to organise the 2027 EPFL Latsis Symposium. The Latsis International Foundation grants CHF 40K to one head of unit at EPFL, or a group of heads of units, per year for the organization of a scientific symposium. EPFL will host In the Same Room: Technology and Critique in the Built Environment, a symposium convened by Prof. Stefana Parascho (CRCL) and Prof. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes (RIOT) that brings architects, engineers, social scientists, historians, and theorists into the same room to confront one of the defining tensions in contemporary architecture: how …

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 …

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.