Architecture
Explore how housing defines urban identity.

Course Details

Language English
Duration 10 week
Effort 3 hour/week
Description

Housing and Cities is a design-oriented architecture course that focuses on key moments of European urban housing history. It looks into ordinary or replicated housing types of different social classes that contributed to the definition of urban identity across borders and time.

Each topic is first introduced through a general overview that examines housing from an urban point of view. Secondly, each topic is illustrated through a typological analysis, aiming for a detailed vision of domestic life at each time.

Students are encouraged to have an operative view of the course, appreciating how modern and contemporary architecture has reinterpreted and been influenced by different housing models

What you will learn


  • Identify the cultural context and time of diffusion of housing types

  • Examine the plans of different housing examples and recognise types of distribution and spatial organisation

  • Estimate how a specific type of housing has influenced urban character

  • Contextualise different types of housing historically and socially

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge of history of architecture and architectural design

Course instructors

Catarina Wall Gago

Catarina Wall Gago is a researcher and lecturer at the Construction and Conservation laboratory of the EPFL, ENAC School of Architecture. She is an architect (IST) and completed a PhD concerning the contemporary renovation of 19th century housing (IST-EPF…

Karen Zysman

Karen Zysman is a lecturer at the Construction and Conservation laboratory of the EPFL, ENAC School of Architecture. She is an architect (EPFL) and teaches in the 3rd year Design Studio on Housing, and in the Master-level course on History of Housing.

Prof. Luca Ortelli

Luca Ortelli is a Professor at the EPFL, ENAC School of Architecture, where he is the head of the Construction and Conservation laboratory. He is the author of numerous articles on domestic architecture, with emphasis on Nordic examples. Professor Ortelli…

École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Free online courses from École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

EPFL is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The past decade has seen EPFL ascend to the very top of European institutions of science and technology: it is ranked #1 in E…

93 instructors