announcing: Prototype Pavilion in Textile Reinforced Concrete with LC3, EPFL Fribourg. OPEN TO ALL ENAC STUDENTS and CAN BE TAKEN AS A PART FOR THE SC MINOR Organized by the ENAC EPF Lausanne in collaboration with LMC EPFL lab and Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenia. EPFL Fribourg: 24 August - 04 Sept 2026 Information Session AAC 132 Monday, 2nd March, 2026, 5:30 pm Presentation: Patricia Guaita, Raffael Baur If you would like to register now, please send an email to patricia.guaita@epfl.ch

UNE ÉDUCATION AU RÉEL L’ATELIER CANTÀFORA 18.03-05.06.2026 Opening! Tuesday 17 March 6.30 pm This exhibition explores the vast field of graphic representation in architecture through fifteen years of teaching architectural representation at EPFL at the turn of the 2000s. It presents around a hundred paintings on wood, didactic works produced between 1997 and 2007 in the teaching units of the painter Arduino Cantàfora. They suggest a possible way of making, between thought and actio, where drawing and painting structure a concept and become an essential language for expressing the founding idea of a project. Despite the transition to digital technology, …

Les Rencontres de l'EDAR is the annual meeting of the Doctoral program in Architecture and Sciences of the City, aimed at gathering the entire EDAR community. Its 10th edition, organized in collaboration with the Institute of Architecture, will be entitled Autonomy and Abstraction and will deal two fundamental dimensions of scholarly inquiry. The two days event, open to the public, will be structured in the form of thematic sessions alternating with keynotes and round tables. Abstraction will be approached in its classical philosophical meaning, consistent with the view that understanding requires the mind to grasp the universal apart from the …

28.11.25 - The EPFL Architecture Studio TEXAS project was awarded the Swiss Arc Award 2025 in the Next Generation category. Congratulations to all the students and the teaching team involved for their outstanding work ! Hétérotopies Taking as a starting point the concept of heterotopia developed by Michel Foucault, the students envisioned the transformation of a housing block built in 1955 in Sarcelles, on the outskirts of Paris. With a careful and committed approach to preserving this modern heritage, they explored ways to extend the spatial and material qualities of these dwellings. Each group developed a collective housing project based …

05.11.25 - Salima Naji is honoured with the Dedalo Minosse International Prize 2025, XIII Edition, Mention Fondazione Pistoletto & Fondazione Città dell’Arte EPFL Architecture congratulates Dr Salima Naji, a practising DPLG architect and Ph. D. in Anthropology from EHESS (Paris), as well as a visiting lecturer at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, on her most recent distinction: the Dedalo Minosse International Prize 2025, XIII Edition, Mention Fondazione Pistoletto & Fondazione Città dell’Arte. After being honoured in 2025 with the Global award for sustainable architecture, and in 2024 the Grande Médaille d’Or de l’Académie d’Architecture de France and …

21.10.25 - As part of his current thesis in architecture at EPFL, Clément Cattin is analyzing how to adapt sloping sites to the challenges of sustainable cities. He summarizes the issues in an article published in three French-language dailies. Urban densification projects are rife across Switzerland. But public enthusiasm remains muted and political pushback is on the rise. So how can we continue to meet demand for housing without eroding quality of life in our cities? For my PhD research in architecture and urban sciences at EPFL, I decided to focus on neighborhoods built on slopes. Unobstructed views, favorable microclimates …

Projets de Master 2025 Exhibition and reviews The 2025 Master Projects Exhibition showcases the work of EPFL architecture students as they confront the material, social, and territorial challenges of today’s world. Spread across three distinct areas, the exhibition showcases a diverse range of approaches: some projects delve into the use of local resources and traditional craftsmanship, working with materials such as wood or earth, or exploring self-building techniques. Others operate at larger scales, reimagining urban and territorial dynamics in light of environmental and societal shifts. A third group focuses on housing, both collective and individual, and on interventions within existing …

Water design is of major importance today. The risks associated with water and climate change are a cause of global concern. The number of projects dealing with water-related issues is virtually endless, so pervasive that they play the role of connectors among coalitions of different players, disciplines, performances and ways of thinking. Water Designs, the title of the exhibition, considers not only water as a topic, but the project that water itself designs, according to its rationalities, logics and behaviours. The water project is the one that shapes our territories and our living space over the longue durée. Water is …

As an industry that relies on extracted materials and an intense use of resources, isn’t construction unsustainable by design? The pressure is increasing for the sector to diligently address the harm caused by the built environment, begging the question of whether real sustainability in architecture and planning is possible. As institutionalized and commodified greenwashing hollows out the term, how do architects and designers position their work beyond the inadequacy of a flattening universalistic understanding of sustainability? What forms of practice allow for accountable and revolutionized construction modes? How can we critically engage with technology as an ambivalent tool in the …

‘Concrete: Cosmetic and Care’ focuses on a heavy heritage: the mass of mainly post-war structures in reinforced concrete. It is THEMA contribution to The Great Repair exhibition. The post-war building boom covered the globe with an unprecedented amount of concrete. Production of every ton of cement alone releases 600 kg of carbon dioxide making the construction industry a substantial emitter of greenhouse gases. Much work in the post-war era focuses on the preservation challenges for iconic brutalist structures. Here instead, the aim is to strategize the maintenance and repair of reinforced concrete as ubiquitous, unspectacular, and unloved and raise awareness …

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.