Positions: Transcalar Prospects in Climate Crisis / EPFL Architecture
Event details
| Date | 15.02.2023 › 08.03.2023 |
| Category | Call for proposal |
| Event Language | French, English |
Research exhibition: call for contributions
Deadline for submissions on 08 March 2023
With last year’s exhibition “Positions” focusing on architecture studios, EPFL Architecture initiated a new format that aims to provide an insight into the department’s multifaceted culture. As education and research in architecture are closely interwoven, “Positions” will in 2023 highlight research activities conducted at EPFL Architecture, and will run in parallel with the “End of Year Show” featuring studios and projets de master exhibitions and juries. The exhibition that shall take place in the Archizoom gallery in the summer months will invite a national and international public to discover research undertaken at EPFL Architecture.
The theme of this year’s exhibition is Transcalar Prospects in Climate Crisis.
The accelerating climate change challenges our discipline, as the building industry accounted for 37% of energy and process-related CO2 emissions in 2021 according to the 2022 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction released during COP27. With the post-pandemic rebound, the sector’s global energy consumption and CO2 emissions have reached an all-time high, and we are therefore not on the path to decarbonization by 2050. The urge for solutions puts our discipline under growing pressure, and requires from architects to position themselves: how should we respond to the fact that architecture, broadly speaking, causes ecological harm? What are our discipline’s capacities and abilities for immediate action or long-term policies? What can research in architecture question, affect, and promote in terms of design process, horizon of references, or aesthetic experience? How can disciplinary and transdisciplinary skills, tools and methodologies contribute to ENAC’s three main strategic axes, Climate Change, Urbanization, and Digitalization?
Against this background, EPFL Architecture convenes laboratories, professors and PhD students, independent researchers and design activists at EPFL to share their perspectives at different scales, from material scale to buildings to cities and territories. This transcalar survey of ideas and methods for addressing issues like material uses, land and soil degradation, environmental justice or circular economy, intends to bring together various vantage points from fields such as construction, theory, sociology, history, aesthetics, and urbanism, in order to question what technical solutions, architectural typologies or urban practices may be able to allow for new prospects in view of the climate emergency.
EPFL Architecture invites submissions in the form of small installations and exhibition artefacts, for instance, drawings, scale models, digital-born objects, books, interactive sculptures, movies, or curated ensemble of objects in flux, that present the myriad types of approaches that are at stake and show in which ways architecture research at EPFL tackles climate change.
A photograph of the object or the ensemble of objects (300 dpi, with rights cleared), together with a diagram that indicates their dimensions (width x depth x height) and a statement (150 words) should be submitted by 08 March 2023 at [email protected] (please specify in object “Positions – submission“).
Contributors will be included in the curatorial process. The exhibition will be supported by EPFL Architecture with a grant and will take place in the Archizoom gallery, SG building, from 30 May to 28 July 2023.
For more information, please contact Laura Trazic.
Deadline for submissions on 08 March 2023
With last year’s exhibition “Positions” focusing on architecture studios, EPFL Architecture initiated a new format that aims to provide an insight into the department’s multifaceted culture. As education and research in architecture are closely interwoven, “Positions” will in 2023 highlight research activities conducted at EPFL Architecture, and will run in parallel with the “End of Year Show” featuring studios and projets de master exhibitions and juries. The exhibition that shall take place in the Archizoom gallery in the summer months will invite a national and international public to discover research undertaken at EPFL Architecture.
The theme of this year’s exhibition is Transcalar Prospects in Climate Crisis.
The accelerating climate change challenges our discipline, as the building industry accounted for 37% of energy and process-related CO2 emissions in 2021 according to the 2022 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction released during COP27. With the post-pandemic rebound, the sector’s global energy consumption and CO2 emissions have reached an all-time high, and we are therefore not on the path to decarbonization by 2050. The urge for solutions puts our discipline under growing pressure, and requires from architects to position themselves: how should we respond to the fact that architecture, broadly speaking, causes ecological harm? What are our discipline’s capacities and abilities for immediate action or long-term policies? What can research in architecture question, affect, and promote in terms of design process, horizon of references, or aesthetic experience? How can disciplinary and transdisciplinary skills, tools and methodologies contribute to ENAC’s three main strategic axes, Climate Change, Urbanization, and Digitalization?
Against this background, EPFL Architecture convenes laboratories, professors and PhD students, independent researchers and design activists at EPFL to share their perspectives at different scales, from material scale to buildings to cities and territories. This transcalar survey of ideas and methods for addressing issues like material uses, land and soil degradation, environmental justice or circular economy, intends to bring together various vantage points from fields such as construction, theory, sociology, history, aesthetics, and urbanism, in order to question what technical solutions, architectural typologies or urban practices may be able to allow for new prospects in view of the climate emergency.
EPFL Architecture invites submissions in the form of small installations and exhibition artefacts, for instance, drawings, scale models, digital-born objects, books, interactive sculptures, movies, or curated ensemble of objects in flux, that present the myriad types of approaches that are at stake and show in which ways architecture research at EPFL tackles climate change.
A photograph of the object or the ensemble of objects (300 dpi, with rights cleared), together with a diagram that indicates their dimensions (width x depth x height) and a statement (150 words) should be submitted by 08 March 2023 at [email protected] (please specify in object “Positions – submission“).
Contributors will be included in the curatorial process. The exhibition will be supported by EPFL Architecture with a grant and will take place in the Archizoom gallery, SG building, from 30 May to 28 July 2023.
For more information, please contact Laura Trazic.
Practical information
- Expert
- Registration required
- This event is internal
Organizer
- Jeffrey Huang, institute director; Dieter Dietz, section director; Laura Trazic, scientist
Contact
- For more information: Laura Trazic ; For submissions: [email protected]