Contribution to the exhibition Des Cèdres à Dorigny
© 2026 EPFL
Centered around architectural projects—both built and unrealized—the exhibition “Des Cèdres à Dorigny”, developed by Archizoom, retraces the birth and evolution of the School of Architecture in Lausanne. A founding speech delivered nearly a century ago by the architect Jean Tschumi opens the exhibition. On this occasion, Prof. Emmanuel Rey, head of the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST), was invited to write a commentary on this speech, examining what has remained constant and what has changed between 1943 and today.
The exhibition “ Des Cèdres à Dorigny ” is structured in four chapters tracing the evolution of architectural education in Lausanne. The chapter titled “Positions” returns to the founding text of Tschumi’s inaugural lecture (1943), examining—through contemporary perspectives from faculty members—what remains relevant in the discipline’s teaching principles and how current approaches have diverged from them. Rereading this inaugural lecture for the newly founded achitecture school in Lausanne allows us to measure the journey taken by the institution and to question its current identity.
Entitled “Between ‘Making Do’ and ‘Doing Differently’: The Paradoxes of a Discipline in Transformation.” Prof. Emmanuel Rey’s text humbly undertakes the exercise. Through a overview of several decades, he reminds us of the discipline’s challenging relationship with time, despite being primarily devoted to space. He emphasises that, thanks to its inventive and transformative nature, the architectural project remains, from this perspective, a particularly stimulating and valuable tool for confronting complexity, both intellectually and practically. As a tool for research and knowledge, it enables us not only to envision but also to test prospectively certain developments in the transformation of our environment, seeking new balances while extending the guiding thread of our school since its inception.