ENAC Week – thinking about life after coronavirus
Extrait de l'une des vidéos de la Semaine ENAC 2020. © ENAC/EPFL
ENAC Bachelor’s students became amateur video makers during ENAC Week – one of the school’s interdisciplinary initiatives – as they looked with relevance and critical mind at how our world needs to change to make it more resilient.
“Back to earth: what should change after the pandemic?” was the question put to 219 Bachelor’s students in architecture, civil engineering and environmental engineering at the end of April as part of ENAC Week. Groups of students drawn from across the school answered that question in videos lasting from four to ten minutes, some of which are available on ENAC’s YouTube channel.
Using the questionnaire created by philosopher of science Bruno Latour, the students had to think about what the post-COVID world should look like and could focus their thoughts on one of EPFL’s six global issues, which they had already studied: food, climate, communications, energy, mobility and health care. They could also delve into two of ENAC’s priority research topics: the resilience of urban areas and digital infrastructure.
The students looked into such issues as how to change urban transport, how supply chains can be improved, and the sustainable habits each of us can adopt. Some of the videos used humor while others took a more serious approach. The 36 teachers who stepped out of their scientific comfort zones in order to coach the students were very happy with the outcome.
Key drivers of change
Because of the partial lockdown, the professors and lecturers who had run the first 14 ENAC Weeks had to completely rethink their teaching techniques and programs and come up with a whole new way of making ENAC Week work. And that led to some good results. “We were pleasantly surprised by the students’ creativity even though they didn’t necessarily have all the equipment they needed,” says Yves Pedrazzini, who became in February 2020 the academic director of the “Design Together” cross-disciplinary initiative, which includes the ENAC Weeks. “Students used sketches, voice-off and animation to express their thoughts about tomorrow’s world – a world in which they may well be the key drivers of change.” The collaboration between teachers also paid off.
“ENAC Week requires students from all three sections to work together in groups,” explains Yves Pedrazzini. “The aim is to remind them that the science they learn at EPFL and that they will practice later on must benefit society, and that architecture and engineering are also social and political sciences. When we saw their work this year, we really felt that message had gotten across.” As for the students, they said that they liked teaming up with students from other fields despite the challenges of working remotely, notes Melanie Studer, who coordinates this flagship initiative.