School Lecture Series: Paolo Tombesi / EPFL Architecture
Event details
| Date | 24.11.2026 |
| Hour | 18:30 › 20:00 |
| Speaker | Paolo Tombesi |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Exhibtion Opening Lecture
The extraction of value – Measurements, materials and craft
25.11.2026-24.04.2027
Produced in collaboration with the FAR
The extraction of value – Measurements, materials and craft
Why and how do we take measurements across building? Does our professional identity determine our needs and methods? By comparing the measuring traditions of different actors, the lecture will clarify objectives and characteristics of the ruling tools in use. The idea is to show how measuring has always responded to multiple instrumental ideas of accuracy, which have in turn affected the production of information and the organization of work.
Paolo Tombesi
An architect by training and a collector by nature, Paolo Tombesi has a long-nurtured interest in the relationship between the intellectual dimension of building and the socio-technical aspects of its construction. Several decades ago, upon the completion of a PhD on the distribution of technical knowledge in building, he started to collect rulers – a compulsion maintained while working at EPFL as professor of construction and architecture since 2016. Between 2017 and 2020, he directed the university’s Institute of Architecture and the City. Prior to his appointment in Lausanne, he held the Chair in Construction at Melbourne University.
Part of School Lecture Series, Autumn 2026, Learning Vol.1
We are told that learning is no longer confined to the school or the university, but it has become a continuous process that involves the totality of life. Yet in accepting this reality, we take for granted several questions that loom large within the contemporary idea of learning. In a time when technology and information are ubiquitous, does it still make sense that for learning to happen or be confined within a place? Is learning still an asymmetrical relationship where there are teachers and a student? And above all, is learning accessible, or has it become too expensive a commodity? In this lecture series, we’ll attempt to answer these questions by investigating learning on different levels such as technology, construction systems, educational spaces, and above all, making architecture. Indeed, the question that is more than anything else crucial to us is whether architecture is still a place of learning and not only of empowering those who have capital to build it. We will look at schools, drawings, robots, and measuring devices. We will ponder whether these things are only ‘tools’ to achieve a result or can still be vital places for learning.
Recordings available on YouTube
@epflarchitectureschool
Graphic Design
Roman Karrer & Sandi Gazic
The extraction of value – Measurements, materials and craft
25.11.2026-24.04.2027
Produced in collaboration with the FAR
The extraction of value – Measurements, materials and craft
Why and how do we take measurements across building? Does our professional identity determine our needs and methods? By comparing the measuring traditions of different actors, the lecture will clarify objectives and characteristics of the ruling tools in use. The idea is to show how measuring has always responded to multiple instrumental ideas of accuracy, which have in turn affected the production of information and the organization of work.
Paolo Tombesi
An architect by training and a collector by nature, Paolo Tombesi has a long-nurtured interest in the relationship between the intellectual dimension of building and the socio-technical aspects of its construction. Several decades ago, upon the completion of a PhD on the distribution of technical knowledge in building, he started to collect rulers – a compulsion maintained while working at EPFL as professor of construction and architecture since 2016. Between 2017 and 2020, he directed the university’s Institute of Architecture and the City. Prior to his appointment in Lausanne, he held the Chair in Construction at Melbourne University.
Part of School Lecture Series, Autumn 2026, Learning Vol.1
We are told that learning is no longer confined to the school or the university, but it has become a continuous process that involves the totality of life. Yet in accepting this reality, we take for granted several questions that loom large within the contemporary idea of learning. In a time when technology and information are ubiquitous, does it still make sense that for learning to happen or be confined within a place? Is learning still an asymmetrical relationship where there are teachers and a student? And above all, is learning accessible, or has it become too expensive a commodity? In this lecture series, we’ll attempt to answer these questions by investigating learning on different levels such as technology, construction systems, educational spaces, and above all, making architecture. Indeed, the question that is more than anything else crucial to us is whether architecture is still a place of learning and not only of empowering those who have capital to build it. We will look at schools, drawings, robots, and measuring devices. We will ponder whether these things are only ‘tools’ to achieve a result or can still be vital places for learning.
Recordings available on YouTube
@epflarchitectureschool
Graphic Design
Roman Karrer & Sandi Gazic
Practical information
- General public
- Free