ON CITIES AND PRODUCTION While the development of productive infrastructures had for a long time followed an extensive model, relegating auxiliary facilities to the outskirts, a new paradigm is emerging: the productive city. In the context of procurement liberalization, Syvil explores how architects can regain agency by shifting their focus to preliminary research, programming, and managing demonstration projects as alternatives to traditional planning. Syvil counters logistical decentralization by advocating for the relocation of logistics infrastructures to urban centers. By examining the history of productive infrastructures in the Paris region, Achille Bourdon uncovers the underlying mechanisms of the productive metropolis, as …

RC ARCHITECTS Vivoli, Affordable Housing Mumbai Vivoli is an ‘environment of spaces’, enclosed, semi-open and open. These spaces construct an opportunity for numerous activities at different times of the day in the house and in the community. It offers multifunctional spaces within the single unit where the user can create different living patterns based on different times of the day avoiding the stereotypical jail cell-like flats that people are forced to buy. Instead, it offers a place that fosters community living in apartments that behave like homes. Rohan Chavan is an architect and deisgner, founder of RC Architects. He started …

The public lecture series Mud on the Floor looks at methods for studying construction sites. Although construction is required for architecture and cities to be built, it can be notably absent from scholarship. There are a few institutional reasons for this (architectural history developing as a subset of art history, for example) but also structural reasons for it: as ephemeral, chaotic, and literally dirt-y sites, construction can challenge our neat scholarly frames and methods. The presentations will be from architects, historians, and anthropologists. The series encourages that we as scholars spend more time in the field or in the archives …

20.08.24 - As researchers learn more about the costs and benefits of urban densification, city planners will be able to make better-informed measures, says Gabriele Manoli, a tenure-track assistant professor at EPFL, in this column published in three daily newspapers in French-speaking Switzerland. A central tenet of sustainable urban planning since the 1950s has been to densify already built-up areas so as to prevent excessive land use and urban sprawl. This concept is still widely accepted, as demonstrated by the latest recommendations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which point to higher residential and job densities as a way …

24.07.24 - Exhibition "Radio-Activities" Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin at Wechselraum, Stuttgart July 19–August 16, 2024 The exhibition Radio-Activities showcases the built infrastructure for radio in Berlin, from the Weimar Republic to the Cold War era. Through the presentation of sounds, archival drawings, and cartographic representations, it offers a unique perspective on the interplay between politics, electronic media, and architecture. Alfredo Thiermann's research spans from the Weimar Republic to the Cold War, focusing on Berlin’s radio infrastructure. 60 years after the Berlin Wall’s construction, the exhibition re-examines the coexistence of opposing political and aesthetic worldviews within the city. …

A multi-purpose log building program La seconde partie du semestre a consisté au développement d’une proposition collective de projet, composée des éléments identifiés lors de la première phase. L’atelier agit alors dans un intérêt commun, divisé en groupes thématiques, mais collectivement engagé dans la production d’une proposition unitaire et rationnelle à toutes les échelles. En étudiant le projet de la plus petite à la plus grande échelle, cette seconde partie a été aussi l’occasion de pousser l’étude de la construction jusqu’à la réalisation d'prototype à l’échelle 1/1. - The second part of the semester consisted in developing a collective project …

In the twentieth century, radical social, political, economic, environmental, and technological shifts challenged existing social contracts - offering new potentials for exercising dominance as well as paths toward liberation. These historical transformations were reified in - and shaped by - new spatial arrangements. The course charts a map of these transformations as they intersect with the production of the objects most specific to the discipline of architecture: buildings. In order to consider buildings as simultaneously concrete objects and conceptual constructs, the coursework examines the changing and competing definitions of the notion of typology as a means to historicize architecture in …

In the short film "re-tracer", we delve into the world of 2023 master's projects at EPFL ENAC Architecture. This cinematic achievement emerges from a collaboration, where architecture and photography students and graduates from both EPFL and ECAL join creativity. Together, they present an artistic exploration, allowing us to journey through the final year of an architecture master's student. The film retraces the student's deep reflections, thoughts, and the unique atmospheres that have marked their educational experience, all while unraveling the process of project investigation and the inception of creative concepts. Title: re-tracer (2023); Realisation: Dominique Bartels (Visual Communication and Photography …

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.