As EPFL continues to evolve, the quality, accessibility, and adaptability of its learning spaces play a central role in shaping everyday campus life. This ongoing research and development project provides a comprehensive overview of formal and informal learning spaces across the EPFL campus, establishing a shared knowledge aimed at supporting future transformations within and beyond the Flourish project and inform future recommendations.
Using a mixed-methods approach, the study combines spatial inventories, quantitative data collection, stakeholder interviews, and student-led observations to understand how learning spaces are distributed, managed, and used. Formal learning environments, including auditoriums, classrooms, exercise rooms, tutorials, and laboratories, are documented through institutional and section-level data, revealing a layered governance structure.
Informal learning spaces, where learning occurs outside formal instruction, are a particular focus of the project. Often emerging through student initiative and everyday practices, these spaces can be temporary, seasonal, or mobile, shaped by timetables, flows, and ongoing campus and teaching transformations. Their identification required iterative fieldwork and close collaboration with several internal stakeholders. Each space was analysed using a set of spatial, functional, and environmental indicators, including furniture, equipment, access to amenities, booking options, and natural light.
Building on this empirical foundation, the project develops emerging hypotheses around campus flows, spatial “nooks,” and environmental comfort, such as light, acoustics, air quality, and temperature, as key factors influencing learning experiences. By making visible both formal structures and informal practices, this project aims to inform future design and policy decisions, contributing to more inclusive, resilient, and student-centred learning environments at EPFL.
Team: Valentina Rossi, Anna Borbála Hausel
Contact person: [email protected]