PLAY? CONSTELLATION x TECTONICS / studios ORDINAIRE x PIGMENTO / 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.
Acts of responding to place
We re-measure the site, re-reading its affordances. In this way, each student selects a new origin based on your expanded understanding of the land and stories produced in the first semester. Your architecture project will respond to this origin, exploring the notions and findings from the first semester: bodies, senses, territories, detail, program, story. Through listening to others, we produce a constellation of resonant possibilities. Places emanate architectures.
Students
Dylan Broccard, Matthieu Chantelot, Qinkai Chen, Elena Deluche, Romane Descombaz, Ella Fragnière, Adrien Gasser, Mathilde Goetz, Bastian Imboden, Laura Indermuehle, Axelle Kobzos, Albane Lebouleur, Neyla Mezgrane, Carla Pereira Vasconcelos Leite, Lucas Pons, Sol Rosspeintner Almansa, Xavier Scherwey & Tommaso Verde, Hippolyte Ageron, Markos Angelos, Rayane Chételat, Nora Dietrich, Deborah Dörfliger, Daniel Garcia Müller, Félix Grandjean Dalla Torre, Sarah Laurent, Ghida Mcheik, Elsa Michellod, Luca Ramelli, André Rocha Do Rosario, Kevin Toan, Lilly Troeltsch & Lucie Uwaifo.
Studio Directors
Rosa Climent - Yann Salzmann
Student Assistant
Louis Crisinel - Sarah Carroz
Y1 Team
Nikhil Calas, Laurent Chassot, Augustin Clément, Rosa Climent, Dieter Dietz, Matthieu Friedli, Flavio Gorgone, Nessim Kaufmann, Romain Masoni, Bastian Marzoli, Estefania Mompean Botias, Manuel Potterat, Yann Salzmann, Sara Sherif, Annabelle Thüring