Publications related to Modern architecture

Le Collage comme outil exploratoire collectif dans la conception d’espaces publics

Sonia Monique Curnier, Véronique Mauron Layaz

L’imagerie produite par les conceptrices et concepteurs d’espaces publics est dominée aujourd’hui par des représentations photoréalistes. Toutefois, certaines agences choisissent de manière délibérée d’autres types d’images : des collages. Notre étude se f ...

2023

Preserving suspended structures with light façades (1960-1980). Architectural study and retrofitting proposals

Giuseppe Galbiati

Nowadays, the energy efficiency of the existing building stock is internationally accepted as a topical issue. Energy retrofitting is encouraged, improving the thermal performances of buildings, but often altering the historical image of our cities. Attent ...

EPFL2023

The Many Lives of Apartment-Studio Le Corbusier

Franz Graf, Giulia Marino

Le Corbusier’s apartment-studio is an iconic object of the twentieth century, combining the indisputable material values of the building with the intangible “sense of place” of an architect’s home. Le Corbusier, who lived there from 1934 until his death in ...

EPFL Press2022

In the Quest for Meaning: Revisiting Modernism’s debate around non-pedigreed architecture

Vasileios Chanis

In architectural historiography, it is widely accepted that in the aftermath of WWII, Modern Architecture found itself in the trouble of redefining its quest, its meaning, and its purpose; a crisis of the Modern before the Post-Modern. Thus, in this partic ...

2022

The New Brutalism, invenzione di uno stile

Silvia Groaz

The concept of New Brutalism has been the victim of a series of misunderstandings, myths and aporias. The initial intentions, devoid of any principle or dogma, have passed from hand to hand. The original definitionâ if only one can be identifiedâ has be ...

EPFL2021

Methodology for energy retrofitting of Modern Architecture. The case study of the Olivetti office building in the UNESCO site of Ivrea

Franz Graf, Giulia Marino, Giuseppe Galbiati

Latest European Union programs related to energy efficiency underline the need for retrofitting existing buildings, which are responsible for 40% of EU total energy consumption. Accounting for almost 45% of the existing building stock, the architecture of ...

2021

Koolhaas' Revision of Foucault's panopticon; or how architecture and philosophy just met

André Patrão Neves De Frias Martins

Architecture and philosophy have engaged with one other, directly, marginally, or just simply implicitly, in the works and discourse of academics, practitioners, and critics, most evidently in architectural modernism, postmodernism, and most intensively in ...

2020

Organique - L'Architecture du logement des écrits aux oeuvres

Bruno Marchand, Christophe Joud

Cet ouvrage part d'un constat surprenant : l'émergence, à partir des années 2000, d'une série de projets de logements collectifs en Suisse utilisant des géométries irrégulières, tant dans la configuration intérieure des espaces domestiques que dans la form ...

PPUR2020

Modern Schools in Angola, 1961-1975: Design with Climate and Heritage

Maria Margarida Gonçalves Quintã

The architectural production of Angola between 1961 and 1975 forms the basis of the current study. Taking into consideration that buildings' environmental performance is, at one time, one of the most central aspects of the Modern Movement legacy and a pres ...

EPFL2019

A New Era of American Architectural Concrete: From Wright to Som

Roberto Gargiani

The affirmation of reinforced concrete and the kinds of space generated by its structures is one of the most fascinating and revolutionary chapters in the history of twentieth century architecture and engineering. This richly illustrated, three-volume essa ...

PPUR2020

From technocrats to laymen: Community planning and self-help housing for workers in Marshall Plan countries

Sila Karatas

With the introduction of the Marshall Plan to Europe after the Second World War, architectural practice for workers’ housing faced a paradigmatic shift by means of procedural approaches and spatial strategies as well as roles of planner, architect and comm ...

2020

The Neigborhood Unit: Relevance of an architectural tool

Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon, Chiara Monterumisi

Over the last few decades, the notion of common has occupied an increasingly prominent place in the interdisciplinary debate as an alternative political horizon to neo-liberal dynamics and in turn as an envision of new social engagement also in the domain ...

2020

Palimpsest Metaphor: Figures and Spaces of the Contemporary Project

Paola Viganò

What are the consequences of the use of the palimpsest metaphor on the construction of the contemporary project? The metaphor casts criticism on the modern project and opens to the long-term (longue durée). The investigation of territorial rationalities br ...

2020

Teaching the Laboratory of Techniques and Preservation of Modern Architecture (TSAM) at the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Franz Graf

More than a decade ago the tsam addressed the question of teaching the preservation of modern and contemporary buildings as a new discipline, specifically and radically different from that of new architecture, both in terms of theoretical courses and the c ...

2019

Outreach Extensions: OMA/Rem Koolhaas Exhibitions as Self-Critical Environments

Christophe van Gerrewey

Many times in the history of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Rem Koolhaas has self- or co-curated exhibitions of recent work-in 1978 at the Guggenheim in New York; between 1980 and 1990 in London, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Rotterdam, France, Pari ...

2019

De l’Existenzminimum à l’existence commune

Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon, Alessandro Porotto

À l’intérieur des récits de la modernité architecturale, et au-delà dans sa divulgation générale, l’Existenzminimum, associé au deuxième Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne, est très souvent cantonné à un caractère évènementiel, étudié en tant que ...

2019

The Modern Project: A Research Hypothesis

Paola Viganò

The project of the industrial modern city comprises many heterogeneous paths and stories, in particular those regarding the CIAM (Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) Functional City. They all come together in a discourse that links the architect ...

2019

Protostructure, archéologie et hypothèse d'une architecture-support

Agathe Claire Estelle Mignon

« How do we pile up dwellings without sacrificing their independence ? » Nicolas John Habraken asks the question in those terms in the book he first published in Dutch in 1961 then in English in 1972, Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing, as an introd ...

EPFL2019