PhD

Architecture and Sciences of the City

Study mode:On campus Study type:Full-time Languages: English
Deadline: Jan 15, 2025
43 place StudyQA ranking:3593 Duration:4 years

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The Doctoral Program Architecture and Sciences of the City (EDAR) is part of Doctoral School of EPFL (EDOC). It brings together in one doctoral program the world of architecture and that of social sciences concerned with the inhabited space and combines basic and applied research in an interdisciplinary perspective. Comprised of faculty members active within more than twentylaboratories of EPFL, the EDAR program receives three times a year new doctoral students interested in its scientific orientations which encompass four research areas across the researches conducted in the laboratories.

The EDAR program is based on two fundamental principles: the strong and varied relationship between basic and applied research and interdisciplinarity.

The link between theory and practice enables students to treat the project – regardless of its subject (architecture, urbanism, spatial development) and its actors (from individual residents to the local community as a whole) – both as an object of study and as a research challenge. Today, reflexivity on action proves to be indissociable from action itself; if this is disregarded, the result is very likely to be inefficiency and failure. An approach to the great theoretical and epistemological questions is therefore of crucial necessity for everyone. This method is intended to enable students to master the dual complexity of intellectual construction and of situative action in one single movement. This is the challenge that the EDAR programme helps its doctoral students to take up.

Interdisciplinarity as conceived of in the EDAR programme is multidimensional. It is situated inside architecture (history, theory, projects) and in the urban sciences (geography, urban sociology, environmental economics, housing and networking, urbanism and spatial planning), but also between the two fields in that it is based on the role of a mediator between the problems of the city, of mobility, of space, and of inhabiting it. Finally, the openness of the EDAR programme to mathematics, the sciences of matter and life and the science of engineering is part of its essential choice. The programme also maintains particularly close relations with the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC), which regards interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity as fundamental and is the origin of a large part of the faculty and doctoral students of EDAR.

Research areas

The different research areas outlined below intend to guide current and future doctoral students through the various research topics addressed in this program.The interactive map gives an overall view of research areas and the affiliated laboratories within EDAR. 

« Sciences of the City »

The research area of Sciences of the City is aimed at students of social sciences (Sociology, Geography, Economics, Political science, Anthropology, History), but also architects and engineers wishing to pursue a thesis on urbanization, urbanity, mobility and habitat.
It concerns primarily an understanding of the contemporary urban world in all its aspects as a fundamental dimension of inhabiting and even more generally, of social life. This requires a reflection on epistemological and theoretical tools that allow thinking of space of societies, fixed and mobile lifestyles and urbanization as long-term historical process. 
It is also essential to analyze, with renewed tools, components of contemporary urbanity: ways of living, mobility, public space, productivity and creativity, for which the contributions of the humanities and social sciences are mobilized, both about countries already completely urbnized and those that experience an accelerated process of urbanization in the context of the globalized world.
Finally, urban action, whether in the usual form of urban planning or other less conventional expressions (sectoral policies, urban social movements, etc..), will be questioned. One unique feature of urbanism is indeed in complex relationships of mutual interpenetration of observation and action, analysis and project, experts and inhabitants.

« History, Theory, Heritage »

History, Theory, Heritage is open to any proposed research topic likely to provide a deeper understanding of the questions inherent in the fields of history and theory, from the vantage point of process of architectural project, in particular from the point of view of construction and composition.

The terms construction and composition are intended in the broad sense from the materials and their nature, the structures and statics, the project criteria established by architectural treaties and texts and even the non-compositional creations of contemporary art and architecture. The choice of the construction and composition as the privileged framework of various researches reflects the conviction that the two disciplines constitut the poles, often conflicting,upon which the creative process in architecture is based.

« ComplexDesign»

The questions raised by the massive urbanization of the territory entails, in terms of sustainable development, increasingly complex project strategies in architecture and urbanism. At an intermediate scale between the city fragment and the building, control of the territorial reach demands solutions that integrate very specific infrastructures and equipments. Indeed, many examples show that from a critical area of over 100,000 m2, the energy problem, as well as constructive and programmatic issues change radically.

The need to construct large, dense and mixed, in order to construct sustainable, having to confront architectural and urban issues of the new scale require appropriate approaches and methodologies. This is what ComplexDesign intends to offer to PhD students. It also aims to meet a growing demand for academic and professional plans in highly qualified and complex projects. 

« Integrated Design, Architecture, Sustainability »

This area of research meets the objective of further integration of sustainability issues in architecture, as well as the wish to reinforce the exchange and the synergies with different institutes of l’ENAC. 
To this end, developed as IDEAS (Integrated Design, Architecture, Sustainability) this theme is partly based on an interdisciplinary teaching within EDAR doctoral school, in the form of seminars and workshops, and secondly on a structured network of EPFL PhD students whose thesis contributes to this theme. Besides, it is in line with a Minor which has been developed for the Master cycle on the same subject. 

  • Grade records for all years of all attended universities, undergraduate (BS) and graduate (MS) levels
  • Diplomas, as far as already available. If the diploma is not available, an official certificate of success has to be provided.
  • CV
  • Statement of objectives (in English). This document has to reflect your motivation and your research project.
  • A copy of your passport or official identity document showing your name in full.
  • 3 Recommendation letters (downloaded by the referees themselves as soon as the the candidacy is submitted by the candidate)
  • If diplomas and grades are not originally in French, German, Italian or English, please provide electronic or scanned copies of certified translations into English.
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