Tour d'horizon 2020
Prof. Emmanuel Rey's Studio, December 2019 © EPFL | LAST | O. Wavre
To mark the end of the 2019-2020 academic year, the last months of which took place exclusively in the form of distance education, an overview of the different activities of the architectural design studios at the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne was organized online Friday, May 29, 2020. In this context, the studio of Prof. Emmanuel Rey presented the work carried out at different scales for the design of a new fluvial neighborhood in La Jonction in Geneva.
Composed of a virtual exhibition and a series of online inter-workshop forums, this event organized under the aegis of Archizoom not only allowed to discover the students' work but also to understand the centers of interest of each studio as well as their different didactical and methodological approaches.
Prof. Emmanuel Rey’s studio, entitled "Rhodanie urbaine", explores during four years the issues related to the creation of a new fluvial neighborhood. The approach focuses more particularly on designing - from the urban project to the constructive detail - a dense, mixed, and interconnected neighborhood in the immediate vicinity of the Rhône.
The chosen site for this academic year 2019-2020 constituted a field of investigation particularly suited to such an exploratory approach. Located at the confluence of the Rhône and Arve rivers, it is a portion of urban territory located in the heart of the city of Geneva. This strategic area, benefiting from great landscape qualities, is likely to undergo a strong transformation in the coming decades. Indeed, the public transport depot, currently located there, will be presumably displaced.