AFFORDANCE / STUDIO ANEMOXPUNCTUM / 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
The studio’s theme focused on publicness in a mostly domestic landscape of housing blocks. The neighborhood where projects were implemented is located above Piazza Riponne in a sloped setting of Lausanne. The propositions from students had to bring an aspect of collectiveness using the existing and vacant structures surveyed during the first days.
Students
Maria Almasio, Dana Bisada, Eliott Bricman, Alexandre Bühlmann, Giona Canevascini, Charlotte Elongama, Talia Fuchs, Samuele Gianini, Maël Gilgien, Nirvana Herren, Raphael Hubbard, Asiya Hussein, Erjon Krasniqi, Flavie Laufer, Constance Littman, Lucia Marchetti, Maylis Messerli, Saga Moser, Michael Parris, Alessia Rettore, Jordan Sandoz, Elisa Staedler, Tajan Suero Santana & Damian Wang.
Oscar Allan, Dune Bachelard, Sera Benzaken, Luna Berno, Romain Cerise, Zaïra Chitou, Antony Coppa, Lucan Curtis, Axelle Evéquoz, David Ferreira, Ivan Giorgis, Ana Jutzi, Maven Katchamakov, Leonardo Kleysteuber, Lily Mancheron, Thomas Nguyen, Lexane Pahud, Enzo Rossi, Esther Schneider, Mathias Schütz, Naomi Thévenaz, Kira Tijs & Claire Vianin.
Studio Director
Nessim Kaufmann - Annabelle Thüring
Student Assistant
Lydia Genecand – Joseph Mazière
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