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Programme
The two-year Master’s degree in Architecture (120 ECTS credits) combines in-depth theory with advanced practical work. A 12-month architecture internship, which is required for admission, provides professional immersion. The programme focuses on design, research and experimentation. Spread over four semesters, it includes three semesters of classes, project workshops and theoretical studies (90 credits), followed by a semester dedicated to the Master’s project (30 credits). It adopts a multidisciplinary approach that integrates engineering, humanities, and practice. Students choose a specialisation, which guides their selection of workshops and teaching units, with the option of adding a minor. A presentation day before the start of the academic year allows students to discover the workshops and units, supervised by professors and guest lecturers.
Visions and Strategies Group: 2 mandatory courses to be chosen (6 ECTS)
Group consisting of 5 courses, with a requirement to choose 2 courses. Additional courses are placed in the options group.
Commun Core Group: mandatory subjects (33 ECTS)
Course The origins of modern domestic space, Prof. Aureli (autumn MA3) for 2025-2026
SHS course Introduction (autumn MA1)
SHS course Project related to the introductory course (spring MA2)
Superstudio (Autumn MA3): Superstudio
Master’s thesis (MA3): individual work (12 ECTS), dissertation and oral examination. Supervision by a professor who is a member of the Master’s project supervision group. Validation is required for the Master’s project.
* The courses ‘Public Law for Architects’ (2nd Bachelor’s, Autumn) and ‘Architectural Project Management’ (3rd Bachelor’s, Spring) are compulsory. Students entering directly into the Master’s programme must take these courses, unless they have equivalent credits from their Bachelor’s degree.
Mandatory project group: 2 semesters of project studio (24 ECTS)
Group including the course Theory and Criticism of the Project. Validation of two workshops during the Master’s programme.
Group of optional subjects: Optional subjects (27 ECTS)
Group of optional subjects including all other subjects, and including teaching units. It’s mandatory to take one teaching unit during the Master’s programme, with a maximum of two during the course. Choose from among the available optional subjects.
PDF Cycle master user guide
General framework of the Master’s Project
The Master’s theoretical statement (12 ECTS), lasting one semester in the 9th semester of the Master’s programme, constitutes the first part of the Master’s Project. The student or pair of students lays the theoretical foundations for their work under the supervision of a professor. The professor responsible for the theoretical statement (ENAC or SAR/IA professor) must be part of the Master’s Project monitoring group, either as an academic supervisor or as a professor. Guest lecturers are not eligible for supervision. The assessment of the statement involves the professor in charge, who is responsible for grading, and an observer, another professor in the supervisory group.
The 90 credits for the Master’s programme must be completed to be eligible for the Master’s project.
The Master’s project (30 ECTS) is an architecture project carried out independently by the student or a pair of students after validation of the theoretical statement. The student chooses the members of their supervisory group, the theme and the site of their study. The supervisory group includes an academic supervisor (SAR-IA professor) and an ENAC professor, at least one of whom must be an architect. An EPFL mentor (teacher, assistant or scientific collaborator under contract) supports the student. The assessment is carried out by a committee composed of the academic director, another professor, two candidates and an external expert appointed by the SAR. The mentor may attend the oral examination and, with agreement, the deliberations.
Admissions are managed by the Academic Services Centre (SAC). The Master’s in Architecture page provides a general overview. For official and detailed information, please refer to the EPFL reference page.
Admissions to Master’s Degree in Architecture ↗︎
Admissions EPFL ↗︎
Internship in architecture ↗︎
The detailed study plans specify the courses to be taken each semester, along with available options, including the number of hours and credits.
Master’s study plan ↗︎
Architecture’s study plan ↗︎
The optional course ‘Project Theory and Criticism’ allows students to explore various themes through individual or group projects. The teaching units (TU) in the Master’s programme, which bring together several lecturers/teachers around a specific theme, take place half a day per week and are worth 4 ECTS credits.
Studios / TU ↗︎
To deepen a particular aspect of their studies and to develop interfaces with other EPFL sections, students may choose to undertake a programme offered as part of a minor (30 ECTS).
Recommended by the section
Integrated Design, Architecture and Sustainability (IDEAS)
– Web page (IDEAS) ↗︎
– Presentation of 1 September 2025 ↗︎
Minor in Engineering for Sustainability (SIE)
– Web page (SIE) ↗︎
– Presentation of 1 September 2025 ↗︎
Mineur en construction durable (SGC)
– Web page (SGC) ↗︎
– Presentation of 1 September 2025 ↗︎
Autres
All interdisciplinary minors ↗︎
Plus d’info sur les pages du service académique
Minors ↗︎
The Superstudio is a teaching module in which final-year Master’s students collaborate and refine their ideas alongside the theoretical brief (énoncé théorique).
Prof. Pier Vittorio Aureli, TPOD
Course sheet
Orientations
The Master’s orientations group together courses, teaching units and studios centred on a specific field of architecture. They offer students an in-depth study programme and a transdisciplinary training, worth 22 ECTS, designed to develop targeted skills.
Master’s orientations presentation – 1 September 2025 ↗︎
Orientation A ‘Form – Data’ explores the impact of digital technologies and artificial intelligence on architectural creation. It examines how both the collection of diverse data and machine learning capabilities are redefining the architect’s role and the generation of forms in contemporary design.
Prof. Jeffrey Huang, responsable
Following the discourse that emphasised the autonomy of form as a fundamental principle of architecture, attention to the genesis of form gradually shifted at the end of the 20th century, when technological advances enabled architects to analyse and explore the fabrication of forms using digital techniques and innovative data analysis. More recently, machines have demonstrated their ability to learn from collected data—sourced from a wide variety of inputs such as geographical information, artistic images, architectural precedents, and environmental, political, social, and cultural data—and can therefore contribute in unprecedented ways to the creation of architectural forms. The conventional role of the architect as the ‘sole author’ and primary ‘giver of form’ has yielded to the revolutionary capabilities of a new generation of architects working at the human–machine interface, a shift that has reshaped the generation of forms within design disciplines, increasingly within the broader context of artificial intelligence and big data.
Presentation – 1 September 2025 ↗︎
Mandatory
Studios
Theory and Critique of the project MA1** : Huang / Weinand / Scheidegger et Keller (12 ECTS)
TU
TU X : Experience Design** : Huang (4 ECTS)
TU N : Constructing the view, Schaerer (4 ECTS)
Courses
The origins of domestic space : Aureli (3 ECTS)
Constructing the View: Still Life**, Schaerer (3 ECTS)
Recommended
Studios
Theory and Critique of the project MA2 : Huang / Weinand / Scheidegger et Keller (12 ECTS)
TU
TU N : Constructing the view, Schaerer (4 ECTS)
Courses
Constructing the View: In Motion, Schaerer (3 ECTS)
Digital Design and Making: A critical introduction, Parascho (3 ECTS)
** One of the courses is mandatory, all may be attended, and one TU and one studio must be selected.
Orientation B ‘Habitats-Housing’ examines contemporary challenges in housing in relation to ecological, social, and political issues. It explores critical approaches to dwelling, hospitality, and the commons, integrating architectural innovation and diverse ways of living to design sustainable and inclusive living spaces.
Prof. Sophie Delhay, responsable
Working on housing invites us to start from the most intimate experience of the body to gradually invent our living spaces, neighbourhoods, and territories, shaping the future forms of habitability.
In the face of the challenges of transition, housing assumes its full political significance: the possibility of a habitable world. It raises questions about our presence in the world and our ways of coexisting with others and with the living environment.
From this perspective, designing the housing of tomorrow means situating the housing project within three horizons that allow for a critical examination of the inherited forms of domestic life:
- The first horizon is that of dwelling, of singular use and engagement with the world, where our routines and attachments are formed. Housing here is both a condition of anchoring and of emancipation.
- The second horizon is that of hospitality. Housing here serves as the interface of our relationship with others, both human and non-human. It is a condition for welcoming and caring for the vulnerable, and for exercising consideration and respect.
- The third horizon is that of the commons. Housing here is the space where our neighbourhoods with others and the living environment are reinvented, a condition for new forms of coexistence. The challenge is to rethink the form of our cities and territories from the inside out, starting from the membranes that protect us while opening us to the world. The housing project intersects here with a social perspective — linked to the differentiation of ways of living and individual uses — and an architectural perspective — related to the composition of the plan, and to spatial, constructive, and material qualities.
Ultimately, working on housing means finding forms that make possible a fairer, more open, freer, and socially and spatially virtuous world, within an ecology of human relations.
Presentation – 1 September 2025 ↗︎
Mandatory
Studios
Theory and Critique of the project MA1** : Braghieri / Delhay / SUMMACUMFEMMER (12 ECTS)
TU
TU C : Habitat and Society : Del Puppo/Legrand/Pattaroni (4 ECTS)
Courses
The origins of domestic space : Aureli (3 ECTS)
Habitat and typology : Delhay / Lapierre (3 ECTS)
Recommended
Studios
Theory and Critique of the project MA2 : Delhay / Fala (12 ECTS)
TU
TU U : Cartography : Maçães e Costa (4 ECTS)
Courses
Land and Real Estate Economics : Thalmann (3 ECTS)
Housing and Urban Development : Felder / Pattaroni / Schaeben (3 ECTS)
The project of comfort in 20th century architecture : Marino (3 ECTS)
Urban sociology : Delley / Del Puppo / Felder / Pattaroni (3 ECTS)
** One of these courses is mandatory, all may be attended, and one teaching unit (TU) and one studio must be selected.
Orientation C ‘Cities – Territories’ focuses on urbanisation as a driver of new practices and dynamics. It examines the City-Territory as a network of infrastructures, productive landscapes, and urban ways of life. The track explores the city and its landscapes as renewable resources in the ecological and social transition, emphasising coexistence and territorial recycling.
Prof. Paola Viganò, responsable
Urbanisation lies at the heart of Orientation C as a framework defining new conditions for individual and collective practices, natural dynamics, and rationalisations. Both its description and its design require the development of specific conceptual and operational tools, calling for a renewal of landscape and urban design practices, and of the project as a generator of knowledge, allowing the integration of urban design, landscape urbanism, and regional and environmental planning.
The City-Territory, shaped by the gradual accumulation of infrastructures, landscape dynamics, ecological and agricultural interventions, service distribution, fully productive landscapes, and urban ways of life, is at the core of our investigation. Beyond the traditional dichotomies of centre/periphery or city/countryside, it allows us to read the dispersed contemporary condition as a potential for building a sustainable and innovative urban-rural dimension, where the notion of reconditioning/recycling/territorial reinvestment overturns the idea that urbanisation is merely a process of waste, considering it instead as a “stock” and a reservoir of embodied energy. This orientation explores the possibility of designing the city and its landscapes as a renewable resource through the lens of ecological and social transition, valuing both open and built spaces, ecosystems, social heterogeneity, and coexistence in space.
Presentation – 1 September 2025 ↗︎
Mandatory
Studios
Theory and Critique of the project MA1 ** : Malterre-Barthes / Viganò / Rolli et Schürch (12 ECTS)
TU
TU J : Territory and landscape ** : Cogato Lanza / Riondel (4 ECTS)
TU U : Cartography ** : Maçães e Costa (4 ECTS)
Courses
The origins of domestic space, Aureli (3 ECTS)
Exquisite corpse: Architecture assembled** : Khosravi (3 ECTS)
Urbanism and territories ** : Kaufmann/Viot (3 ECTS)
Recommended
Studios
Theory and Critique of the project MA2 : Malterre-Barthes / Viganò / Rolli et Schürch (12 ECTS)
TU
TU K : Architecture and sustainability: Performance studies : Fivet / Pastore, Regazzoni / Rey (4 ECTS)
TU N : Constructing the view : Schaerer (4 ECTS)
Courses
Spatial and regional economics : Dessemontet (3 ECTS)
Habitat and urban development : Felder / Pattaroni / Schaeben (3 ECTS)
Thinking the nature I : Mauron Layaz / Ourednik (3 ECTS)
Science and technology in urban transformation : Baudry/Graezer Bideau (3 ECTS)
Social justice and transition in the urban context : Pattaroni (3 ECTS)
Urban sociology : Delley / Del Puppo / Felder / Pattaroni (3 ECTS)
Urban governance : Genoud (4 ECTS)
City and mobility : Drevon / Kaufmann (3 ECTS)
** One of these courses is mandatory, all may be attended, and one teaching unit (TU) and one studio must be selected.
Orientation D ‘Conservation – Resources’ addresses the existing built environment as an essential resource for 21st-century urban development. It explores the conservation and transformation of buildings as contemporary practices, emphasising the materiality and social context of architecture, as well as the industrial systems that support these spatial ideas.
Prof. Claudia Devaux, responsable
The existing built environment must be regarded as a resource, and interventions affecting it, from maintenance to transformation, represent a significant challenge for 21st century urban development. Conservation projects and projects within the existing fabric form part of an established cultural discipline that expands the scope of contemporary architectural practice. Building within the built is not a new practice. What makes it contemporary, however, is the type of theoretical and practical questions posed about the architectural object at all scales, and the focus on the materiality of the built environment that gives the project form.
The concept of resource lies at the very foundation of creating meaningful and effective architecture, interpreted both as a framework for social activities and as an intelligible positioning, while also engaging with construction architecture, that is, the industrial system that allows spatial ideas to achieve a solid built substance.
Presentation – 1 September 2025 ↗︎
Mandatory
Studios
Theory and Critique of the project MA1 ** : Devaux / FAR / Naji (12 ECTS)
TU
TU F : Architecture and rehabilitation ** : Arlaud / Beyer / Wall Gago / Zurbrügg (4 ECTS)
TU K : Architecture and sustainability: Performance studies ** : Fivet / Pastore / Regazzoni / Rey (4 ECTS)
Courses
The origins of domestic space : Aureli (3 ECTS)
Restore, transform and create – Practices ** : Devaux (3 ECTS)
Comfort and architecture: sustainable strategies ** : Pastore / Wienold (3 ECTS)
Introduction to BIM (Building Information Modeling) **, Hautecoeur (3 ECTS)
Recommended
Studios
Theory and Critique of the project MA2 : Devaux / FAR / Naji (12 ECTS)
TU
TU S : Foundations, basements, and the underground : Nichols / Ruggiero (4 ECTS)
ENAC Project
ENAC Project (Those considered for the IDEAS Minor), various Instructors(4 ECTS)
Courses
Building design in the circular economy : Fivet, Küpfer (3 ECTS)
Energy and comfort in Buildings : Khovalyg / Licina / Sonta / Favero (5 ECTS)
Fundamentals in ecology : Battin/Grossiord (5 ECTS)
The project of comfort in 20th-century architecture : Marino (3 ECTS)
All courses listed for the IDEAS Minor
** One of these courses is mandatory, all may be attended, and one teaching unit (TU) and one studio must be selected.
Orientation E ‘Types – Typologies’ explores typology in architecture as a cultural approach based on repetition and shared characteristics of buildings. It examines how types, such as the courtyard building, connect constructions across time. Typology values proven solutions while encouraging reasoned and collective invention, situated within architectural history.
Prof. Eric Lapierre, responsable
The notion of typology implies a disciplinary approach to architecture, often reduced to the study of architectural permanences. However, some types, such as the Haussmannian building, existed only during a specific period and in a specific place, yet in a significant number of examples, which still qualifies them as a type. Typology is, therefore, a concept founded on repetition. By type, we mean a kind of matrix with blurred contours that allows buildings to be grouped into families. For example, the corridor plan and the courtyard are examples of types. A type is not a model to be replicated, but all buildings belonging to a given type, even if they differ in form and space, share a series of common characteristics that are useful to know.
Some types, such as the courtyard building, can be considered permanent: a house in Pompeii, a Persian caravanserai from the Middle Ages, a Beijing hutong, or many contemporary buildings share common characteristics. It is clear that the typological approach is a cultural approach to architecture; it requires knowledge of its history, as it allows relationships to be established between buildings constructed in widely separated times and spaces. It thus offers an inclusive perspective on the discipline.
Moreover, typology tends to relativise the idea that new societal problems can only be solved through entirely new architectural inventions. While buildings can take a potentially infinite variety of forms, they derive from a much smaller number of types, demonstrating the resilience of spatial organisations. Ultimately, the typological perspective is also an invitation to invention—but a reasoned invention—that celebrates, while putting into perspective, the notion of the author. By recognising the validity of certain proven solutions, typology allows invention with discernment and integrates individual creativity into the flow of a collective architectural culture.
Presentation – 1 September 2025 ↗︎
Mandatory
Studios
Theory and Critique of the project MA1 ** : Fröhlich / Lapierre / DOSCRE (12 ECTS)
TU
TU C : Habitat and society** : Del Puppo / Legrand / Pattaroni (4 ECTS)
TU V : Visions and utopias** : Braghieri / Cattapan (4 ECTS)
Courses
The origins of domestic space : Aureli (3 ECTS)
Constructing the View : Still Life**, Schaerer (3 ECTS)
Habitat and typology** : Delhay / Lapierre (3 ECTS)
Recommended
Studios
Theory and Critique of the project MA2 : Fröhlich / Lapierre / DOSCRE (12 ECTS)
TU
TU N : Constructing the view : Schaerer (4 ECTS)
Courses
Marvelous architecture : Lapierre (3 ECTS)
Data centers : architecture, environment, information : Correa / Nueno / Thiermann
** One of these courses is mandatory, all may be attended, and one teaching unit (TU) and one studio must be selected.
Conditions
The Academic Services, in collaboration with the Architecture Section, provides administrative support throughout the programme. It ensures the smooth handling of enrolments and provides information on admissions, deadlines, and procedures. Moodle centralises teaching resources and assignments, while IS Academia manages enrolments, timetables, and results. Assistance is available in case of difficulties using these platforms.
Master’s Programme
Time constraints influence the choice of optional courses, as certain courses overlap in the ENAC section study plans. It is essential to check the prerequisites and the type of assessment (continuous or final exam). Each course must be validated individually, with no possibility of compensating between marks. A group is successful when the minimum number of credits for the group is achieved.
Course and exams registration: online via IS Academia in the autumn and spring semesters. Students must comply with the deadlines set by the Academic Services Department.
Course and exam registration ↗︎
Studios and teaching unit registration: online via IS Academia. Presentations take place the week before the start of the academic year in September. Registration takes place in the autumn (2nd-3rd Bachelor’s, 1st Master’s) and in the spring (3rd Bachelor’s, 1st Master’s). Students rank studios and teaching units in order of preference and in accordance with the rules of their specialisation. Exchange students register in accordance with the guidelines and ensure that they have access to secure services.
PDF Studios / TU registration
Archives
See the projects completed by students during project studios thanks to the Living Archives platform which brings together work produced within EPFL Architecture.
Contact
Section Deputy
Vanda Costa
[email protected]
+41 21 693 08 66
BP 2232
Educational coordinator
Maria Cunha
[email protected]
+41 21 693 12 29
BP 2131
Master’s Project Coordinator
Corinne Waridel
[email protected]
+41 21 693 60 12
BP 4226