ON WATER AND DESIGN Facing the (re)emergence of water-related questions in both the disciplinary debate and the broader social discourse, the session aims to bridge theoretical and practical perspectives on water in urban and territorial design. It will focus on water’s potential to become a territorial agent of transformation of design practices to drive equitable urban development in the time of socio-ecological Transition. Ranging from the political, environmental, cultural, and technical implications of the paradigm shift regarding water, Kelly Shannon, Chiara Cavalieri and Taneha Bacchin will question themes such as water urbanism, sponge cities, and water-sensitive design.

EXHIBITION Every two years, the Federation of Swiss Architects FSA awards a single research grant, resulting in a publication and a travelling exhibition supported by the Architectural Council of Switzerland. In his project, Lukas Ingold, recipient of the sixth FSA research grant, explores the diverse processing methods for wood and their potential for architecture. The use of high-performance building materials such as moulded plywood opens up many new design possibilities, particularly with regard to environmental architecture. The research focuses on architectural issues as well as historical, ecological, economic, technical, and cultural considerations. It thereby establishes an alternative perspective on building …

OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION Addresses Professor Sarah Nichols Professor Marco Bakker Lukas Ingold Caspar Schärer, General Secretary of the FSA followed by an aperitif Every two years, the Federation of Swiss Architects FSA awards a single research grant, resulting in a publication and a travelling exhibition supported by the Architectural Council of Switzerland. In his project, Lukas Ingold, recipient of the sixth FSA research grant, explores the diverse processing methods for wood and their potential for architecture. The use of high-performance building materials such as moulded plywood opens up many new design possibilities, particularly with regard to environmental architecture. The …

Chiara Cavalieri, architect and PhD (IUAV, University of Venice), is associate Professor of Urbanism at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain). She is currently member of the scientific committee of Louvain4City, member of the steering committee of Metrolab Brussels, and member of the steering committee of Brussels Studies Institute (BSI). Over the last years, she has collaborated and taught in the field of architecture and urbanism at a number of different international schools, including IUAV Venice, GSD Harvard, EPFL Lausanne, ITMO St. Petersburg, and ENSAP Lille. She has participated and directed several projects, researches activities and international workshops (with Iuav …

FALA ATELIER Cheshire cats & Trojan horses 165 homes willfully bending expectations and regulations. Within a context of dire need for affordable housing on the one hand, and a growing homogenization of domestic spaces on the other, innovative strategies suggest a reconsideration of what could be good housing. fala is an architecture practice founded in 2013. In its first decade, the atelier's central endeavour has been a constellation of housing projects and transformations built in portugal. — This lecture is part of the lecture series "Affordable Housing: Six Exemplary Projects" For the Fall Lecture Series, the School of Architecture at …

The public lecture series Mud on the Floor looks at methods for studying construction sites. Although construction is required for architecture and cities to be built, it can be notably absent from scholarship. There are a few institutional reasons for this (architectural history developing as a subset of art history, for example) but also structural reasons for it: as ephemeral, chaotic, and literally dirt-y sites, construction can challenge our neat scholarly frames and methods. The presentations will be from architects, historians, and anthropologists. The series encourages that we as scholars spend more time in the field or in the archives …

This talk introduces drawing as an investigative tool. Architectural drawings do not only communicate information, but create it: compiling, scrutinizing, charting, comparing, and hypothesizing from existing sources. Such methods are especially relevant in a particularly resource-scarce and messy area of historical research: construction history. The lecture focuses on one building firm: John Laing & Son, a large-scale builder of garden cities and settlements in the early twentieth century, using drawings to piece together construction sites, details, projects and work relationships. The scale and scope of Laing’s vertically-integrated organisation redefined normative roles such as ‘contractor,’ ‘unskilled worker,’ ‘developer,’ and ‘architect.’ This …

07.10.24 - Sophie Delhay, an architect and EPFL professor, is promoting an entirely new approach to designing and building homes. She believes we urgently need to break away from standard housing types that no longer correspond to today’s reality or modern-day imperatives. A new generation of architects is upending conventional construction practices in response to the societal shifts and challenges of the 21st century. Sophie Delhay is one of these architects. Based in France, she’s an associate professor at EPFL, where she has taught for the past two years, and a specialist in residential architecture. She just took over as …

28.06.24 - The new issue of "matières" brings together essays in which an 'end' to architecture - historical or current - is analysed and interpreted. A publication directed by Christophe Van Gerrewey, assistant tenure track professor. Architecture continues thanks to the consequential proclamations of its end. The aim of this issue is to examine how this mechanism has worked and continues to work.To refer to the end of architecture is always to redefineits end in the other sense of the word: its purpose, itsmeaning, its finality. This end is only possible because there is no consensus on what architecture really …

Le Glossaire EPFL Architecture est un document qui réunit et définit un ensemble de termes spécifiques liés, de près ou de loin, au domaine de l'architecture à l'EPFL. Il sert d'introduction aux structures de base de EPFL Architecture, de l'ENAC et de l'EPFL, leurs acronymes, leurs misssions, leur système de gouvernance, les status et les rôles qui les composent, leurs espaces et leurs infrastructures. Ce recueil se base sur un ensemble de ressources publiques et offcielles mises à disposition par l'institution (textes de lois LEX, RES et documents en ligne). Il ne prétend pas les remplacer mais les rassemble et …

This semester we asked ourselves why not letting water leak beyond romantic reasons and reintroduce it into the public space. We will started by looking at what we have and capture the multi-layered past of the site, its complex ecology, its projected futurism in order to build on it. We let the water draw itself, on and through the existing enviroment, following its own logic. We looked at water as a common ressource that can activate civic spaces as much as it is activated by the public.

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.