Publication of the book « Bâtir pour la mobilité durable »

Point Vélo EPFL © Olivier Wavre

Point Vélo EPFL © Olivier Wavre

On the occasion of the EPFL Bike Center inauguration, the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST) publishes a book entitled "Bâtir pour la mobilité durable”, which retraces the stages of this unprecedented approach, from student competition to completion.

The origin of the EPFL Bike Center realization is based on a convergence of values between the needs identified by the Sustainable Campus unit and the didactic objectives aiming to stimulate the integration of sustainability into the architectural project. It is more particularly the result of the student competition entitled "Sustainable is beautiful", organized by the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST) with the support of EPFL Real Estate and Infrastructures Department (DII), Sustainable Campus Unit, EPFL Student Foundation (FEE) and the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA, Vaud section).

The architectural approach should aim at finding a proper adequacy of the means implemented, the control of the construction processes and the use of materials with low energy, environmental and economic costs. The competition offered students the opportunity not only to imagine the project from a purely conceptual point of view, but also to consider its realization by developing it in its constructive reality.

Among the thirty proposals received, which involved more than 80 students in architecture, the project proposed by the students Micael Lopes and Antoine Vauthey, was unanimously awarded by the jury. Based on this result, the studies were then continued within the LAST, in order to develop all the components of the architectural proposal. This detailed design phase was done within a team made up of the two laureates and several collaborators of the laboratory.

At its scale, the Bike Center is part of an emerging vision of buildings that, through a dual effect of demonstration and polarization, has the status of sustainability activators.

BATIR POUR LA MOBILITE DURABLE

Du concours pour étudiants à la réalisation du point Vélo de l’EPFL

Préface de Martin Vetterli, Président de l’EPFL

Emmanuel Rey, Sophie Lufkin, Aleksis Dind

Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Laboratoire d'architecture et technologies durables, 2018 

ISBN 978-2-9701169-1-2