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 …

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 …

End of Year Show Spring 2025 Questioned and reevaluated, the very foundations of our disciplines find space for exploration, research, and critical dialogue within the design studios. The Semester Exhibition will open on Monday, May 26th. A lecture by BHSF Architekten will take place on Tuesday, May 27th, followed by an apero. Exhibition & Reviews Mo 26. May to Fr 30. May 2025 EPFL SG Building School Lecture Tu 27. May 2025, 18:30 BHSF Architekten Auditorium SG Exhibition Opening Apero Tu 27. May 2025, 19:30 Ada Lovelace Square

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 …

Industrial organizations have significantly shaped the relationship between urbanization and industrialization through their policies of constructing and managing urban spaces, as well as their social actions, with company towns representing an outstanding example of this influence. Often seen as remnants of history, some company towns still maintain an active presence in their original territories, significantly affecting the daily lives of their residents in the long term. At the heart of these projects, quality of life was a fundamental unit of measure alongside worker productivity. Reading these realities through the lens of biopolitics offers a perspective to examine how power was …

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.