AFFORDANCES / studio ALTANE X ORDINAIRE/ ALICE
The ALICE Year One (Y1) program at EPFL explores architecture as a collective, process-oriented, and situated practice, grounded in learning-by-doing and collaboration. Rather than solving predefined problems, students engage in architectural gestures rooted in the living world, seeking respectful relationships between humans, materials, and environments. Structured through successive cycles (FRAGMENTS, ROOMS, PLAY), the pedagogy emphasizes resonance between knowledge, place, and practice, aiming to reconfigure the discipline’s values beyond performance and profit. Architecture here becomes a shared process of learning, where designing, building, and inhabiting merge.
We end the semester with a workshop, AFFORDANCES, whereby we search for overlapping themes emerging from 300 individual ROOMS and a precise collective knowledge of the site. Students were asked to explore the site’s potential through the lens of POST-FABRICATION and to gather as much data as possible on the potential reuse of materials for their second-semester projects. The workshop is organized in four teams:
01. Mapping of stakeholders and institutions such as recycling centers, museums, and theaters, as well as a map of buildings slated for demolition and reported to the Canton of Geneva for potential material recovery.
02. Reuse Atlas EPFL to list usable materials on the campus (object identification sheets with dimensions, weight, etc).
03. Reuse ATLAS BATTELLE to list usable materials on the site of Carouge (object identification sheets with dimensions, weight, etc).
04. Strategies with references and axonometric projections.
Maram Abeidi, Aurélie Addor, Hippolyte Ageron, Leslie Andachi Caiza, Markos Angelos, Clothilde Baron, Marion Buchanan, Rayane Chételat, Rose De Montfalcon De Flaxieu, Nora Dietrich, Deborah Dörfliger, Nina Dubey, Arthur Favre, Thoma Fawer, Daniel Garcia Müller, Matilde Gianola, Kaarlo Granados, Eloy Grandchamp, Félix Grandjean Dalla Torre, Ambre Grept, Lothaire Hirzel, Radwah Kaichouh, Pierre-Yves Keller, Sarah Laurent, Alan Luisoni, Ghida Mcheik, Elsa Michellod, Gülbenay Özkan, Gabriel Pugnale, Luca Ramelli, Fitia Randriamasy, Tatiana Rey, Louise-Marie Robyr, André Rocha da Rosario, Rafael Rosa Miranda, Maxime Roulié, Céline Servant, Omar Singer, Ketsia Thévoz, Kevin Toan, Lilly Troeltsch, Lucie Uwaifo, Ludovic Würzner, Alessia Yenny, Melisa Yolal, Cyril Zara
Studio Director
Matthieu Friedli – Yann Salzmann
Student Assistant
Sarah Carroz – Anna Compagnon
Y1 Team
Nikhil Calas, Laurent Chassot, Augustin Clément, Rosa Climent, Dieter Dietz, Capucine Fouquin, Matthieu Friedli, Nessim Kaufmann, Romain Masoni, Bastian Marzoli, Manuel Potterat, Yann Salzmann, Sara Sherif, Annabelle Thüring, Alejandro Varela Lopez