ALICE – Atelier de la conception de l’espace (EPFL)
ALICE is a laboratory at the school of architecture (ENAC/SAR/IA) at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was founded in October 2006 and offers an experimental approach to design in architecture at the bachelor level. The team consists of a group of architects and researchers from across Europe and Switzerland. All members of the team have built up their own practices in different European cities, including London, Berlin, Zurich and Lausanne. ALICE benefits from this international background on a daily basis, most members commuting between those cities and Lausanne. The members of the team are Olivier Ottevaere (Multiply Studio, London), Isabella Pasqualini (Architect, Zurich), Daniel Pokora (Mazzapokora, Zurich), Katia Ritz (Architect, Lausanne), Marc Schmit (Playze, Berlin and Shanghai) and Eveline Galatis (Secretary, Lausanne). Dieter Dietz (UNDEND Architecture, Zurich), architect and associate professor at ENAC/EPFL, is heading the team. All members of the team have been educated in Swiss and international universities.
ALICE propagates a flat hierarchy in all its projects. All members are asked to be fully responsible for their respective activities. The second year teaching program is based on a parallel approach to the conception and production of architectural space. In a process of intense confrontation with the idea of ‘making’ in both a physical and a digital sense, the students are asked to work with crafted models, drawings, or hand-drawn sketches at the same time as they develop their projects through the production of digital models, visuals, databases, images etc. In this approach the design process is constantly challenged by catalyst ‘reactions’ in the respective fields of production. This ‘synthetic approach’ relates to the concept of ‘learning by building’ and embodiment—a core idea that is employed in current research on artificial intelligence.
DIETER DIETZ is an architect, founding member and partner at UNDEND Architecture in Zurich. He was educated at ETH Zurich and at The Cooper Union in New York City. Next to many winning entries in national and international architectural competitions, the work of Dieter Dietz has been awarded with the Swiss Design Award in Architecture among other distinctions. He is currently Associate Professor for Architectural Design at EPFL in Lausanne, where he has been since fall 2006.