Awards for two Master Projects carried out at the LAST

The trend towards urban sprawl of the built environment in recent decades is incompatible with the search for long-term equilibrium underpinned by the principles of sustainability. In fact, urban sprawl not only requires the use of large amounts of land but also generates important environmental impacts, accompanied by socio-cultural disparities and higher infrastructural costs.
Given this fact, architectural design is expected to play a central role in the search for alternatives to redirect urban development inwards, to densify urban areas near public transport services and to generate sustainable construction methods.

In this optic, the master project developed by Julia Magnin focused on exploring the possibilities of increasing simultaneously the density and biodiversity in urban areas. The approach revealed in particular the great potential of a sector of Thonex (GE) located in next to a future stop on the CEVA line and a greenway being developed at a territorial scale. The supervising group who followed this Master Project was constituted of Prof. Emmanuel Rey (supervisor), Dr. Monique Ruzicka-Rossier (professor), Dr. Sophie Lufkin (teaching assistant) and Laurent Daune (expert).

The Master Project developed by Gian-Luca Ponzetta and Baptiste Wenger consisted for its part in an exploration of issues related to urban densification in eastern Lausanne. With their project developed for a strategic sector of Lutry (VD), they demonstrate the possibility to upgrade the historic villages into sustainable urban polarities. The supervision group who followed this Master Project was constituted of Prof. Emmanuel Rey (supervisor), Prof. Marilyne Andersen (professor), Loïc Fumeaux (teaching assistant) and Anne-Catherine Javet (expert).