The conferences and lectures provide a space for reflection and discussion on contemporary issues in architecture. They bring together architects, researchers and professionals to share their experiences and explore new perspectives. Open to students, teachers and the general public, these meetings contribute to the dissemination of knowledge and promote dialogue between theory and practice.
Upcoming School Lectures ↗︎
School Lectures recordings ↗︎
In recent years, housing has once again become a focus for architects. This renewed interest coincides with a historic moment in which, more than ever before, housing is seen as a commodity – to be sold and rented – rather than a space to live in. Whereas in the 20th century, many architects – often employed by the government – had the opportunity to develop large-scale housing complexes and experiment with new typologies and construction methods, affordable housing today is reduced to a few specific projects, drowned out in a sea of purely land-based urbanisation. Despite these unfavourable conditions, some recent housing projects have succeeded in formulating what accessible housing could look like in the 21st century. Although these projects do not (yet) reach the scale of their predecessors, they innovate in how they foster a more collective life or welcome new forms of home and lifestyle.
As part of this series of lectures, EPFL Architecture is highlighting six exemplary housing projects. Each guest will present a project, showing precisely what quality housing means, from design to occupation. The aim of these lectures is not to romanticise social housing, but rather to demonstrate that building such housing is both difficult and possible.
The Neighbours lecture series is a forum for provocative voices in architectural research. Faced with unprecedented social and political pressures, those working on the history and theories of architecture are called upon not only to react, but also to reconsider their historiographical and epistemological tools, and even the very object of ‘research’.
Organised by EPFL professors of architectural history and theory – Pier Vittorio Aureli, Sarah Nichols and Alfredo Thiermann – and their respective laboratories, this series explores themes that situate architecture within a spectrum of issues ranging from labour to construction, materials to property, questions of form to politics and planning, the organisation of class and gender roles to the search for the origins of architecture.
The series questions how the discipline is instrumentalised by – and instrumentalises – its broader historical context to operate and assert its values. Rather than dissolving architecture into a generic multidisciplinarity, the aim is to study how it situates itself alongside/with/against its neighbours – whether related disciplines or cultural and political fields – and, in so doing, to question and reformulate the landscape of architectural history and theory.
EPFL Architecture and its community organise conferences, exhibitions and symposiums throughout the year, open to the academic community and the general public, to disseminate research and practices in architecture.
All events ↗︎
