Thursday 12 March 2026 – 18h30
Archizoom, EPFL – SG building
Lecture followed by a conversation with Pier Vittorio Aureli, director of the Institute of Architecture at EPFL
This lecture is proposed in the framework of the exhibitions Des Cèdres à Dorigny, bâtir l’école d’architecture at Archizoom EPFL, and Jean Tschumi Designer at mudac, and promoted by the CUB foundation.
If the 280-metre tower overlooking Leman Lake (Tour de Beaulieu, 1961) and the series of inhabited bridges spanning the Flon Valley (Ponts-Ville project, 1988) had been built, they would have radically transformed the urban and architectural experience of Lausanne. These two visionary projects, one designed by Jean and the other by Bernard Tschumi — father and son — are now preserved in the Archives of Modern Construction at EPFL and bear witness to an architectural ambition that transcends the boundaries of the built environment.
For this lecture, Bernard Tschumi will look back on his unique career path – from theorist to builder – and discuss the fundamental role of representation in architectural practice and the new complexities introduced by digital technology, particularly in education. He will advocate for architecture schools as centers of critical thinking and innovation for the profession, and defend a vision of architecture as a tool for cultural and social transformation.
Jean Tschumi is one of the leading figures in modern architecture in French-speaking Switzerland, notably through his designs for the Nestlé headquarters in Vevey and the WHO headquarters in Geneva. His work as a designer and teacher is now being highlighted in two simultaneous exhibitions in Lausanne: Jean Tschumi Designer at mudac, which reveals his furniture designs for Le Cèdre, the headquarters of Vaudoise Insurance, and Des Cèdres à Dorigny at Archizoom, which traces the founding of the school of architecture in 1943 and the birth of the first campus of EPUL — the predecessor of EPFL — in the campagne des Cèdres.
BIOGRAPHY
Bernard Tschumi gained international renown as early as 1983 when he won the competition for the Parc de la Villette in Paris. Since then, he has designed buildings that have marked the recent history of architecture: the Acropolis Museum in Athens, the Blue Tower in New York, Le Fresnoy – National Studio of Contemporary Arts, the Marne-la-Vallée School of Architecture and the ECAL in Renens, among many others. Founder of a New York agency in 1988, he has also taught at the AA School in London and directed the Columbia University School of Architecture, making teaching a natural extension of his practice.
Both a theorist and a builder, Bernard Tschumi develops architecture nourished by deconstructivist concepts of contrast, allowing ideas of movement, spectacle and event to be infused into architecture, which he calls ‘the tension between the concept and the experience of space’. Influenced by Cédric Price and Archigram, he draws on literature, cinema and philosophy to assert that architecture must be part of the cultural debates of its time and constantly question its own foundations. His work has been exhibited in two major retrospectives at MoMA in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
