EXFORMA explores the notions of Reuse, Repurposing and Recycling. These processes serve as methods for reclaiming waste, challenge established production processes and combat obsolescence, while giving a second life to components and materials. They also provide another reading on the environments in which we live. However, despite their current relevance and undeniable necessity, these circular practices often struggle to establish a broader connection with the discipline of architecture.

EXFORMA invites to collectively reflect on how we can combine these circular strategies with more ambitious cultural goals that are firmly rooted in the history of architecture. By aligning them with diverse notions like ready-made, as-found, objet-trouvé, copy, sample etc... these processes resonate with other contemporary cultural practices. At the same time, when confronted with technical issues of structure and assembly, circular design principles offer a dual opportunity: on the one hand, the comprehensibility of construction, and on the other hand the possibility for an innate expression of architecture.

EXFORMA seeks alternative perspectives on circular strategies, questioning our modes of construction and consumption by considering the economy of means, materials and energy. During the semester we will focus on the physical act of construction. Various strategies coming from the engineering and the artistic worlds will support this exploration process departing from the scavenging of an existing infrastructure to the design of a building, whose architectural language will be defined and refined through the constructive journey that we are going to have together.

Leaving formalism and conventions behind us, we will create architectures born from the deep understanding of the act of construction, seeing architecture as a technical, cultural and political act rather than a purely design exercise.

Join the ride !

When all that will be used is what is already there, finding becomes a key task. The selection of these findings forces the architect to operate also as a curator. And the result of this selection becomes the narrative of materials that are appropriate, selected and locally available only at that exact moment. First comes the hunt and then the construction.  

The semester will begin with the construction of a 1:1 junction using scavenged parts, challenging us to shift how we perceive and read the city. From this starting point, students will analyse Swiss infrastructure, investigating where new reservoirs of building material might lie hidden in plain sight. Through these findings and 3D scans, the students will create a digital component catalogue that will serve as the starting point for their projects. The choice of the construction materials is the founding principle of the design process.

Through hands-on prototyping, 3D scanning, and the use of AI as an iterative design tool, we will explore new futures for materials otherwise destined for a linear lifecycle.

A series of workshops and conversations with artists, material and AI specialists, researchers, and engineers will introduce key concepts in circularity, construction, and ready-made design. Together, we will uncover new possibilities, and use architecture as a means to reimagine waste as a source of potential.

Fall 2026, EPF Lausanne, Studio PARABASE

Introduction: 07th September 2026, 10am
Location: AAC008

Intermediate reviews: 6th October, 09th November
Final review: 17th December

Groupwork only
Anticipated spend per student: 100 CHF + approx 300 CHF for the study trip
Teaching Language: English
Course number: AR-301(bi) and AR-401(bi)

Teaching Team: Carla Ferrando Costansa, Pablo Garrido Arnaiz, Léo Perrin-Livenais

• Understand circular design principles (reuse, repurposing, recycling) and apply them in architectural practice.
• Recognise reuse not only as a sustainability strategy but also its usage or relevance in other contemporary cultural expressions.
• Gain awareness of material streams in the built environment and their ecological implications.
• Gain hands-on experience in constructing 1:1 prototypes using scavenged parts.
• Explore unconventional material junctions and experiment with physical assemblies.
• Understand the technical and aesthetic challenges of building with non-standard, second-life components.
• Acquire skills in 3D scanning and digital modeling of found components.
• Experiment with AI as a generative and iterative design tool, integrating machine intelligence into architectural workflows.
• Develop the ability to critically analyze the intersection of architecture, production, and consumption, merging cultural ambition with ecological responsibility.
• Situate design work within contemporary debates on sustainability, obsolescence, and cultural practice.
• Work collectively to build shared knowledge bases and engage with external experts (artists, material specialists, engineers, researchers) to broaden perspectives.
• Practice communication, negotiation, and collaboration in group settings.

Waste ultimately reveals how industrial production processes work, from both an economic and a social point of view. When all that will be used is already there, finding becomes a key task. First comes the hunt, then the construction. 

This condition not only changes the usual design process but also alters our view of the built environment and questions how we assign value to things. The act of designing will begin by directly engaging with specific materials or components at full scale. 

If we want to reuse components, we first have to learn how to assemble them. And in order to connect heterogenous elements not originally meant to fit together, we need to work not only conceptually but also technically on the joint. The notion of originality and even of creation will slowly blur while working in an almost analogous manner to a programmer, a DJ or a curator, selecting objects and putting them together in a new context.

The semester will begin with looking at infrastructures with new eyes. We will tackle three abandoned ski-lifts in Super St-Bernard / Villars sur Ollon / Metabief, scavenging materials and components that we will later use to build. This exercise should be creative, ingenious, experimental, and convincing. The fragment should not only explore the in-between and the fixing, but also represent a potential architectural detail - a piece of wall, floor or hinge? We want students to be open-minded, to push the limits, explore the possibilities of each material and what this joint could be. Think unconventionally, have fun!

Running alongside this, each group will choose a program scheme after a site analysis which will act as the focal point of their design throughout the semester. Departing from a need of a community living nearby the infrastructures - as a starting point, each group will analyse linear processes, be it material production, waste streams or component life cycles, to find where an intervention could make these systems circular. 

Students will interrogate these systems in order to develop a narrative and formulate a position on these topics. Through their research they will determine ways to repurpose elements and make them suitable for construction. By 3D scanning and modelling these components, students will compile a catalogue of parts which will form the basis of their building design. Each group will determine their project location and programme in accordance to their story. The 1:1 fragment and the research on infrastructure will be presented together in the first review. 

• Digital Presentation / one per group
• Printed Plans / one per group
• Component Catalog / one set per site
• 3D Scans / one set per site
• Site Study: Program Research + Program Proposal / one per group
  
   

Once a narrative, programme and site have been established, we will start to experiment with the compiled 3D material catalogue. We will introduce AI tools to assist us with the design of our projects, using iterative component compositions to work out new structural systems with our gathered pieces. Students will learn how to use this technology by exploring its limits and again, we will profit from its periphery: the error. 

We believe that creativity consists of intuitively taking advantage of mistakes for our own benefit, in using what lies in the margins, the noise, the anomaly. In this constant shift between the digital and the physical we wish for one reality to inform the other and vice versa. By testing, transforming, assembling these materials, and exploring their limits we seek to reveal their hidden properties.

In order to better understand the act of building, we will hear from practitioners across the whole construction process to acquire knowledge about craft and building techniques. We strongly believe that the capacity to understand materials and construction is crucial to designing meaningful architecture. Students should source material samples and make tests to understand their weight, properties and potential.

Throughout this phase, each group will develop a structural system which will later be translated and detailed into a building. The systems, material tests and initial drawing set will be presented at the second review.

to be announced

The final chapter will focus on design detailing, and ensuring that each project has a circular strategy that helps to reduce CO2 emissions. In a non-dogmatic way, CO2 calculation tools and methodologies will be introduced by researchers and experts in this field. These calculations should be used to argue and support design choices.

We will not only analyse the embodied carbon of our projects but we will also challenge the energetic demand of our designs. This way, we aim to question preconceived ideas of standards, norms and what we understand as comfort.

By the end of the semester, we will bring our projects back to the physical realm. To do so, we will present our projects in tangible contexts.

Inserting objects into new contexts helps us to break with the modernist ideology, the question is no longer: what new thing can be done? But rather: what can be done with what we already have? How can we create meaning from that chaotic mass of objects that constitute our environment? As Kenneth Goldsmith puts it: context is the new content.

to be announced