EPFL

Single-family homes are among the most common domestic architectures in Germany. As a basis for this project, the theoretical statement The Boundaries of Labor which examines domestic space in the crisis of (elderly) care, identifies single-family homes as the place where the current crisis becomes most evident. They conceal the work of (mostly female) caregivers and isolate those that depend on care. Drawing on research and conversations with caregivers, the project proposes scenarios that examine potentials for transformation in a single-family home neighborhood in Borken, Germany, over the next 30 years. Differing in scale, these interventions mean to facilitate social connectivity, mutual aid, civility and adaptability for changing life circumstances of the residents. The aim is to create an architecture which considers the (affective) relations that residents form with their surroundings—by fostering social and cultural acceptance as well as an increased visibility of aging.

Wie sieht die Zukunft der Fabrik und ihr Image im städtischen Umfeld aus? Im Stadtteil Sévelin in Lausanne, der heute weitgehend vom Dienstleistungssektor geprägt ist, fügt sich das Projekt in die letzte Gebäudegruppe aus den 1930er Jahren ein, die an das Recyclingunternehmen Goutte erinnert. Das Programm umfasst hauptsächlich ein Zentrum für die Wiederverwendung von Bauteilen aus dem Rückbau von Gebäuden in Lausanne, was seine Lage im Stadtzentrum rechtfertigt. Hinzu kommen Wohn- und Arbeitsräume für Handwerker, die Teil einer neuen Form der urbanen, lokalen und zirkulären Industrie sind. Die architektonische Maßnahme besteht in der Installation einer Überdachung, die das bestehende Gebäude schützt. Ihre modulare Struktur erstreckt sich punktuell um die Hallen herum, was einen schrittweisen Bau ermöglicht. Dieses Gitter, das wie ein großes Regal wirkt, gewährleistet den reibungslosen Ablauf des Programms und steht gleichzeitig im Dialog mit dem umgebenden Kulturerbe. Könnten Wiederverwendung und Industrie so das Stadtzentrum wiederbeleben?

In Germany, the energy transition is ending decades of coal extraction. This leaves our generation with obsolete infrastructures, devastated land, and unsolved responsibilities. Pass This On investigates how to communally inherit ruins of extraction and reclaim potential resources. Through Protocols and Fictions, three case studies imagine possible futures for the Rheinisches Revier: Unbuilding the obsolete power plant Frimmersdorf proposes a process of careful dismantling and sorting, offering an alternative to demolition and capitalist redevelopment. The ruin becomes a shared resource, facilitating reuse practices. Reactivating the abandoned village of Bürgewald replaces plot boundaries with public grounds and land trusts. To counter speculation and sprawl, backyard extensions evolve into a systematic renovation tool to densify, expand, and connect the existing. Hijacking the last extraction site at Manheim recodes extraction machinery and ground water pumps to prepare for wetland ecologies. This post-natural landscape follows non-human timescales detached from speculative lake futures.

Zurich’s urban densification strategy dominated by systemic demolition and replacement, contributes to an accelerating housing crisis and environmental harm. Building on the Theoretical Statement Erased by Design, which examined the underlying entangled forces of policy, rhetorical obsolescence and others in the imminent demolition of homes along Baslerstrasse, this project calls for a necessary radical shift: halting demolition while revaluing and prolonging the existing. The project unfolds across three levels. First, a catalog archives the settlement’s qualities and material and immaterial values, challenging narratives of obsolescence and devaluation. Second, through a legislative imagination, the project reimagines local planning tools to disrupt the speculative logic of demolition-led densification and promote a more equitable transformation of the city by discouraging developers from demolishing. Third, and based on this altered premise, it proposes spatial intervention strategies to keep and prolong the homes – and its inhabitants, through less extractive, low-carbon approaches.

The diploma project involves the bold transformation of commercial warehouses into housing on the outskirts of Annecy, a town facing strong demographic growth. This ambitious project imagines a new way of living, both mixed and collective, by exploiting the gaps between the existing structures to insert shared, convivial spaces. It is built around “houses” capable of accommodating a diversity of lifestyles, while fostering social ties thanks to generous, well-designed communal spaces. In this way, the interstices become places for sharing, meeting and living together. The presentation of the project, as well as the quality of the drawings and models, testifies to great mastery. This is a refreshing proposal for housing that takes full advantage of the potential of commercial wasteland. The precise and rigorous approach is based on a clear urban strategy, ranging from large-scale to intimate domestic use.

Les vestiges de l’ère industrielle constituent une matière première louable pour la production de logements collectifs comme alternative à l’étalement urbain. Se heurtant à des emprises très épaisses (souvent bien au-delà de 16 mètres), un tel exercice reconsidère à la hausse la profondeur domestique usuelle. L’énoncé théorique, le jeu de la profondeur, explorait l’état limite du standard et offrait des outils projectuels pour l’appréhender. A la frontière franco-suisse, le village jurassien de Boncourt est orphelin de l’industrie lui ayant valu deux siècles de prospérité suite à la délocalisation du cigarettier British American Tobacco. L’Entrepôt pour Tabac d’Orient livré par les architectes bâlois Suter & Suter (1965) se développe brutalement au cœur du tissu en une barre d’environ 200 par 27 mètres qui borde l’Allaine. Le projet reconnaît les qualités constructives de l’ensemble et conserve son intégrité structurelle tout en perçant les zones les moins sollicitées. L’édifice forme une nouvelle pièce urbaine et établit une porosité avec son contexte en accueillant une mixité de programmes publics qui dynamisent le lieu. En particulier, un bain public est finement inséré entre les fondations. Une ruelle aérienne se développe à ciel ouvert à la manière d’une faille sur toute la longueur de l’entrepôt, respectant sa distribution originale centrée, générant deux nouvelles façades introverties. Une imbrication volumétrique complexe confère une variété typologique dans laquelle chaque logis est traversant et tire pleinement parti de l’orientation est-ouest.

This project questions how to stage movement – and life – in urban space. The project proposes to revitalise the Veveyse torrent by giving it back the unbuilt spaces it used to flow through before industrialisation; by redesigning the branches proper to its morphology, rebuilding the banks that once created different types of relations between water and city, and reopening the Monneresses, two branches that would again serve as urban promenades. The former Veveyse delta is designed as an urban park, capable of supporting different forms of life and connecting different urban tissues. Through a walk from vineyards to lake, the project reinvents the procession that was at the origin of the «Fête des Vignerons» and interprets the idea of Festspiel not only as an event that happens across generations, but as a way of animating everyday stages through movement. The succession of these stages rhythmises the movement along the park and anticipates the steps on the place du Marché, which open onto the water stage and the mountain scene.

DIS/ ASSEMBLE investigates the obsolete Chavalon power plant as what is commonly referred to as a Negative Common – a negative resource our generation will inherit. The project’s priority is to offer a vision highlighting our shared responsibility for the site; by proposing its progressive dismantling, re-use and care. Being about process and interactions, a sensible itinerary for its end-of-life is organised with a gradual return to nature, as promised at its time of construction in 1965. The site opens to the public, sanitation and deconstruction begin and the main vacant building is transformed into a re-use center processing and storing the material on site. In this operation, the moment of the boiler’s dismantling leaves the facade of the re-use center open. It makes room for an architectural gesture: a temporary facade in re-used steel that becomes the mediator between the worksite and the public. A monument to deconstruction and visual indicator of the unmaking, remaking, and maintenance of the growing parc.

Almost 350,000 m2 of commercial space are empty in the canton of Geneva. Wouldn’t it be urgent to reinvest these vacant spaces and rethink our models of housing accessibility, as well as our ways of conceiving living together on a building and neighborhood scale? Cooperative housing is a popular answer today, and while it offers many advantages, it remains very limited in terms of access, both financially – the price per square meter to invest is now mainly affordable for the middle class – and in terms of physical access to the building for the rest of the neighborhood. This project proposes to rethink living together both inside and outside the building, in order to build a solid, supportive social fabric with minimal intervention on the structure, while allowing for participative construction. In addition to offering communal spaces for residents, the building also features a first floor and roof open to the neighborhood’s remnants. Ideally located close to the station and the city center, it also incorporates workshops to make it a place for professional exchange.

Unique ville Suisse connectée à la mer du Nord par le Rhin, Bâle se situe au cœur de la logistique nationale. En pleine transformation, le port de Bâle-Kleinhüningen, première interface du pays, accueillera dans les prochaines années des milliers de nouveaux logements et emplois avec le déplacement des activités industrielles vers le nord du port, conséquence du projet du nouveau terminal Gateway Basel Nord. En rapprochant sous un même toit la gestion du port, sa capitainerie, un centre de formation pour les métiers de la logistique et du domaine portuaire, ainsi qu'une cantine, le projet favorise les relations et les échanges entre professionnels, apprentis et étudiants. Situé le long du Rhin, face au Dreiländereck – point symbolique de rencontre entre la Suisse, l’Allemagne et la France – le projet se dresse comme un écran à l’échelle des silos qui constituent le paysage industriel des alentours immédiats. Rationnel, le bâtiment se déploie alors en assumant les exigences actuelles du programme tout en anticipant ses besoins futurs. Une desserte verticale relie les halles de production d’un côté, aux salles de classe et bureaux de l’autre via des espaces appropriables. Reprenant l’inclinaison fonctionnelle des fenêtres des timoneries à 18°, la façade de la capitainerie s’ouvre sur le Rhin tout en donnant au bâtiment une image forte et symbolique qui marque cette nouvelle entrée dans la ville comme un signal pour le port.