Final review of the UPCYCLING teaching unit
Maquette du théâtre mobile (Z. Cortès, T. Kobayashi, J. Pignat) © EPFL / LAST / O. Regazzoni
As part of the axis « Integrated Design, Architecture and Sustainability (IDEAS) », the UPCYCLING teaching unit (UEK) focuses on the integration of sustainability issues into architectural design, with special attention to savings in resources. Dedicated to the interdisciplinary design of a mobile theatre, it gathers about twenty EPFL students supervised by lecturers from the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST), the Laboratory of Integrated Performance in Design (LIPID), the Structural Xploration Lab (SXL), the Building2050 group and the theatre scene.
At first sight, notions of temporary architecture and sustainability may seem contradictory. Indeed, the concept of sustainable development is fundamentally based on the idea of long-term action. Therefore, it may seem out of the ordinary to associate it with practices that, in essence, aim at meeting punctual or ephemeral needs. However, the word “sustainable” should not be understood in terms of an architectural object’s perennity, but in the pursuit of a proper balance between the needs to be met and the means implemented in order to attain them.
The teaching unit articulated the design of a mobile theater around this question of balance, based primarily on the notion of reuse and recycling. In concrete terms, the architecture and civil engineering students joined forces to design a movable pavilion for a traveling theater company. The approach integrated reused and recycled elements, satisfying minimal users’ comfort requirements, and managing the ecological load induced by their projects.