The contemporary building practice, very conditioned by the technique, by the functional aspects and the economy, has the tendency to limit the role of the architect only to certain specialties.
We, generalist architects, believe that the architect must be an architect, an urban planner and a landscape architect. The project of the generalist architect is born from the study of the territory, the site, the pre-existing, the program and their reciprocal relations.

We think that the indispensable element for the union of the different components is the public space, i.e. the void.

Void space accommodates the main components, volumes and circulations.
This project, for the construction of the new building “Life Sciences” is born from the definition of a path that links the two institutions, EPFL and UNIL.

The journey, enriched by the presence of volumes, is transformed into open spaces that generate relationships between the outside and the inside, between nature and the artificial, between the mineral and the vegetal.

Students, teachers, guests, move between the voids and participate in the creation of an “ensamble” that unites people, objects and territory.
We have followed the imperative of the competition program, which requires a clear distinction between the entity 1- Training (TP) – and the entity 2 – Research (DNF, DMF, CIF, CEV) – proposing two separate buildings connected by a plate at the lower level. The distinction between entities is therefore volumetric, but the project is unitary.