Architecture Hub

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.  

Events

School Lecture Series, Printemps 25
Archizoom Exhibition: Sun Shines on Architecture

From the office to the construction site - what is the value of work? Why is architecture so remote from labor struggles, with poorly negotiated labor contracts and barely any self-management models? What possibilities emerge when we acknowledge the glaring class divide between the architectural firm and the construction site? What insights do the stories of workers provide about the construction industry? How do different design practices emerge if designers and construction workers unite? On Architecture and Work is a collection of essays on the relationship between construction, architecture, work, and labor. From complaints over grueling working conditions on construction …

Book Launch: "On Architecture and Work" / RIOT

ENAC Summer Workshop 2025 Drawing Research Platform 2025, London Londres, UK: 17 - 22 Août 2025 During a one-week Summer Workshop in the archives and on the site of Drawing Matter, Somerset, students will explore drawing as a fundamental tool in both architecture and engineering. Through research into the Drawing Matter Collection and the construction of survey drawings and spatial fabrications, drawing will be explored as a corporeal form of measuring and conceiving our environment. The Drawing Matter site, London, UK, offers a unique setting as drawing archive as well as testing ground for construction. The ENAC Summer Workshop Drawing …

ENAC Summer Workshop: Drawing Research Platform 2025, London
ENAC Summer Workshop: A Prototype Pavilion in Textile Reinforced Concrete 2025
CISBAT 2025 International Scientific Conference on the Built Environment in Transition
Forum des transitions urbaines 2025 / LAST

News

Reliable radon measurements, a challenge for property owners
Has the architectural bidding system run its course?

13.05.25 - Michela Bonomo examines in this column the ideology of the luxury seaside villa and shows its limits. Her column was published in three daily newspapers in French-speaking Switzerland. The concept of a seaside villa retreat is ancient, dating back to the Roman Empire, yet the idea of a summer Mediterranean vacation is a recent one. In an essay, Swiss architect Philippe Rahm explored the origins of the summer vacation by looking at it through the lens of science and medicine. As 19th-century scientists made major discoveries about the health benefits of the sea and sun and their role …

How long will the dream of the seaside holiday villa last?
New master's program encourages fresh approaches to urban planning
URBES Laboratory at the exhibition "Datapoiesis" in Venice

30.12.24 - Nathalie Marj, an architecture student at EPFL, has been awarded the RIBA Awards for Sustainable Design and received a special mention for the RIBA Silver Medal for her master’s project “Protocols for Beirut’s Unbuildable Lots: Designing Non-Sectarian Spaces.” This project explores innovative solutions for non-sectarian public spaces in Beirut, addressing crucial environmental, social, and economic sustainability challenges in a complex urban context. For 188 years, the RIBA President’s Medals have recognized the best student work in architecture worldwide. This year, out of 372 submissions, Nathalie’s project stood out for its response to key sustainability challenges while imagining non-sectarian …

RIBA President's Medals 2024: Nathalie Marj Awarded

30.12.24 - The passing of David Jolly, architect and Professor at the Universidad EAD PUCV in Valparaíso, Chile, marks an immense loss. His stance, his remarkable body of work, and his research in the Ciudad Abierta in Chile deeply inspired students of EPFL. David Jolly: The intellectual and teaching legacy of the Open City movement The passing of David Jolly, architect and Professor at the Universidad EAD PUCV in Valparaíso, Chile, marks an immense loss. As the last guardian of the legacy of the Open City movement, his ethical and intellectual stance, his remarkable body of work, and his research …

David Jolly: The teaching legacy of the Open City movement
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Living Archives

End of Year Show 2025
Water Designs: l'eau dessine la ville

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 …

On Architecture and Greenwashing, The Political Economy of Space Vol. 1
Dalmine lives. A biopolitical history of an Italian company town
Concrete: Cosmetic and Care, The Great Repair Exhibition
Temenos. Projet de réaménagement des quais de la rade de Genève

Exhibitions and conferences

School Lecture Series Autumn 2024 - Housing Vol.1
Exhibition: Begin Again. Fail Better
Neighbours Lecture Series vol.4
Exhibition: Brut. 50 ans d'un écrin monumental / ACM
EXHIBITION: Water Designs: l’eau dessine la ville / Archizoom
Exhibition: Zombie Tech / Archizoom
Symposium: Technologie du Bâti / Dreier,Frenzel

Prizes and Awards

RIBA President's Medals 2024: Nathalie Marj Awarded
SIA Master Prize 2024: Meryl Barthe & Noémie Perregaux-Dielf and Enzo Migliano

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.

Sustainable is Beautiful Student Architecture Prize / LAST
Distinction FEB 2024

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.

2023 RIBA CHARLES JENCKS AWARD: Dogma, Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara
SIA Master Awards 2023: "Paris, Transit: last-mile food platform", Marie-Ange Farrell and Manuel Rossi
2023 Fondation Arditi, Master Project Award / Theodora Stefan
The Real Book /ALICE

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.

2022 EDAR doctoral program laureate for the EPFL Distinction /Anna Pagani
Paola Viganò wins the Schelling Award for Architectural Theory
Architect Anne Lacaton wins the Erna Hamburger Award