Des Cèdres à Dorigny

Focusing on architectural projects, both built and unbuilt, preserved in the Archives of Modern Construction, the exhibition From Cèdres to Dorigny traces the birth and evolution of the Lausanne School of Architecture.

From its beginnings at EPUL to its integration into the EPFL campus, this historical journey puts into perspective the conditions of architectural education, its relationship with engineering, and the role of archives in building an institutional memory that sheds light on both the architectural discipline and its teaching.

Des Cèdres à Dorigny is divided into four chapters that trace the evolution of architectural education in Lausanne. The first chapter, Fine Arts vs. Engineering School, recounts the birth of the architecture school during World War II, caught between an artistic education inherited from the Beaux-Arts and technical integration into the engineering school, embodied by the central figure of Jean Tschumi and the Atelier model.

The second chapter, entitled The Big Move, follows the expansion of EPUL, then the creation of EPFL and the choice of the Dorigny site, against a backdrop of strong growth in student numbers, while the school of architecture underwent a transitional phase in the city and a pedagogical opening marked by pluralism. In the third chapter, The School of Architecture Moves to the EPFL Campus, the debates on the place of architecture within the campus are discussed, leading up to the department's move to the north of the site, completed in 2000, and its integration into ENAC in 2002. Finally, Positions returns to the founding text of Tschumi's inaugural lecture (1943) to examine, through the contemporary perspectives of professors, what remains relevant in the teaching principles of the discipline and how they have moved away from them.

Opening: March 3, 2026, 6:30 p.m.