Honorary Professor Michel Bassand has sadly passed away
Michel Bassand in his EPFL office in the late 1980s.
The ENAC Faculty regrets to announce the death on 12 January 2021, at the age of 83, of Michel Bassand, professor at EPFL from 1976 to 2002. He leaves a considerable and multifaceted body of work.
Professor of Urban Sociology at the EPFL from 1976 to 2003, where he directed the Institute for Research of the Built Environment (IREC), then the Urban Sociology Laboratory (LaSUR), Michel Bassand has been a leading figure in Swiss research.
"Michel Bassand has left his mark on the Swiss academic landscape by developing an innovative and internationally recognised urban sociology. In his time, IREC was an exceptional place of intellectual flourishing in which I had the chance to learn the profession of researcher," says Vincent Kaufmann, current director of LaSUR and whose thesis director was Michel Bassand.
Watch the interview on RTS with Michel Bassand, professor at EPFL
In his work, Michel Bassand has in particular shown how a society thinks, produces and reproduces itself in space through mobility dynamics resulting in the phenomenas of agglomeration and metropolisation. He has also analysed how the social, political and economic dimensions come together, both in cooperation and confrontation, which contribute to the construction of a common order and the deployment of collective life. He leaves a considerable and multifaceted body of work.
A biography, "Michel Bassand - Un sociologue de l'espace et son monde" (Michel Bassand - A sociologist of space and his world) was published in 2010 at EPFL press.