Acts of constructive and poetic translation From the preceding phases, the students will intersect, negotiate and discover affinities between studios and projects to propose concrete interventions for site of Battelle-Tambourine in Carouge. A set of 1:1 details are constructed providing story about territory, structure, material, body and landscape. The projects will be reviewed by experts.

The Contract Mode of Building by Chelsea Spencer This lecture examines how architectural anxieties about the relationship between designing and building—a persistent source of disciplinary discomfort—were refracted in the nineteenth-century United States through the ascendant power of contract. What the US case makes clear is that contract was never simply a neutral medium; it was a political idea shaped by particular historical circumstances. The lecture takes up two lines of argument. First, it argues for architecture’s integral role in the reinvention of the contract form itself as the quintessential legal instrument of modernization: an apparatus for securing the fulfillment of …

TRUWANT+RODET+ Increasing the Leak Water has always shaped territories and cities, both visibly and invisibly. In mythology and storytelling, rivers and fountains bring life, healing, and uncontrollable power. Since modernism, we have pursued watertight environments, sealing interiors while buried streams and pipes persist beneath our streets and walls. When a leak appears, this fiction collapses. Forgotten infrastructures surface, and suppressed ecologies emerge—moss, humidity, micro-habitats. Leaks become reminders of water’s formative power, suggesting possible futures for architecture and urban space. Truwant + Rodet + is a Basel-based architecture practice founded in 2017. The diverse background of its partners informs a curious …

28.11.25 - Bruno Marchand receives the 2025 Culture du Bâti Award in the Architecture and Landscape category EPFL Architecture – the Architecture Section and the Institute of Architecture and the City – extend their warmest congratulations to Bruno Marchand, honorary professor at EPFL and winner of the 2025 Culture du Bâti Award in the Architecture and Landscape category. A key figure in architectural education at EPFL, Bruno Marchand was the director of the Laboratory of Theory and History of Architecture (LTH2) and of the Institute of Architecture and the City for several years. His work, particularly on collective housing in …

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 …

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.