Orientations focus on disciplinary skills and transdisciplinary challenges in architecture and urbanism and form an instrument for collaboration at EPFL architecture. They allow students to follow an in-depth cursus towards their master thesis and offer common platforms for transdisciplinary research and teaching between disciplines and laboratories. Each orientation is supported by several laboratories and their professors. Likewise, laboratories contribute to more than one orientation. To ensure transversal coherence in teaching and research, design studios are complimented by mandatory and optional courses and research formats that contribute to a holistic approach in theory and design – where design operates both as an analytical instrument and as a synthetic process, leading to theorized and spatially articulated projects as critical contributions addressing the pressing questions of our times.
