Pedagogy of an interdisciplinary, hands-on workshop to design and build floor systems with reused materials
This paper reflects on the pedagogy used for a series of student workshops on building with reused materials at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and presents the results of its 7 th edition, which focused on floor systems. During these workshops, a learning-by-doing approach encourages collaboration in complex design tasks among architecture, civil engineering, and environmental sciences students. Addressing conventional floor systems' high embodied carbon footprint, the 7 th edition invited interdisciplinary student teams to develop and build an office-building flooring system made with non-conventional materials, i.e., reused components, bio-based and geo-based materials. The four student teams completed a preexisting load-bearing floor system made of reused concrete and steel elements with all the missing non-load-bearing flooring and ceiling layers to meet technical and comfort requirements. As a result of a 5-day hands-on workshop, original flooring and ceiling systems were designed and built by each of the four teams. The paper describes each system and discusses the pedagogical outputs of the workshop.
2025 ICSA (Pedagogy of an interdisciplinary, hands-on workshop to design and build floor systems with reused materials).pdf
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