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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.