TECHNE DIRECTOR
ARCHITECT
Patricia Guaita is an architect, educator, and researcher whose interests lie at the intersection of craft, fabrication, spatial design, and pedagogical practices. She studied at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) and in the Istituto di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV). She successfully defended her doctoral thesis “Action and experience in Architecture: materiality and embodiment in the education of the technological era” at the C.E.U University in Madrid.
Currently, she is a Lecturer at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and holds the position of Head of Techne within the ALICE laboratory. She initiated several research and teaching projects marked by her exploration of a pedagogy of making. This educational approach has been rigorously tested and refined through several experimental project collaborations, notably the with the “Open City Research Platform”, in collaboration with the ENAC EPFL and Ead PUCV, Valparaiso in Chile (2013-19); the interdisciplinary research project “A Prototype Pavilion in Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC)”, with the EPFL ALICE and IBETON in collaboration with the FAUFBA, Salvador de Bahia (since 2019); and most recently, the “Drawing Research Platform, Somerset” in the United Kingdom in collaboration with Drawing Matter org. (since 2023). From 2020 to 2022, she concurrently held the position of Invited Professor at the JMA HEIA Fribourg, where she co-led the master design studio “Construction Cycles: Analysis – Reiteration – Innovation,” with Raffael Baur.
Patricia Guaita is the co-author of significant contributions to the field of architecture and education. These include the publication of the book “Building Cultures Valparaiso: Pedagogy, practice and poetry at the Valparaiso School of Architecture and Design” published by Routledge in 2015; “Notes on learning through building in the Open City: Body, Craft and Materiality in Building for Architecture Education”, Lucerne Talks (2021); “A Prototype Pavilion in Textile Reinforced Concrete: a tool for research and pedagogy”, a review article for the International fib Symposium, Conceptual Design of Structures (2021); “Construction Cycles: Towards a New Ecology of Construction”, a book chapter for the Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa (2022); and “El Pórtico de los Huéspedes: Exploring other ways of building at the Open City in Valparaiso, Chile” included in “The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South” (2022).
She actively participates in critiques, discussions, and conferences on a global scale. She has her own professional practices in Lausanne with an upcoming projects and collaboration.
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