Let us Camp, Let it Campus: From the Tupperware to the Halls, Negotiating Material Comfort at EPFL
Camp Campus addresses the crisis of material comfort in the non-productive spaces of the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne_EPFL campus. Academic learning environments inevitably require domestic activities, as students and staff spend extended periods in these spaces. Places to eat, rest, and make community are key for a learning space to thrive. Yet, heavy regulations and anti-appropriation policies turn halls into sterile boxes in high contrast with the well-equipped labs. Throughout the semester, we engaged in a mapping exercise of F.ACT, documenting the critical situation through both quantitative and qualitative methods. This research informs three intervention layers, each addressing the three essential programmatic needs as mentionned above. The first layer, ACT.IVATE, consists of a series of simple, one-step interventions. The second, INTER.ACT, explores the feasibility of our project through 1:1 installations we performed on campus, from which we extract fundamental principles, the basis for the third layer, PR.ACT.ICE, presenting comprehensive plans for installations. All of them are made legible for campus inhabitants, encompassing spatial data, transparency, and collaboration of campus actors. To Camp Campus is to shift attitude regarding EPFL spatial management. Give room to appropriation rather than fight it by letting a door open, setting a table, and allowing commonality to grow anew into what a campus is supposed to be: an open field (see Paul Venable Turner, Campus: An American Planning Tradition, 1984) rather than a fortresses archipelago.
2025_041_hamel_enonce_enonce_01.pdf
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2025_041_perrin-livenais_enonce_enonce_01.pdf
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