This course will revisit the ideas put forward throughout the 20th century by various Anglo-Saxon personalities—including forestry engineers, urban planners, and landscape architects—who were concerned with the medium- and long-term consequences of human action on the environment. Rooted in an intellectual lineage dating back to the 19th century (Thoreau, Marsh), these thinkers sought to explore and experiment with design methodologies that embraced a different relationship with nature and a mode of human settlement more respectful of resources, ecosystems, landscapes, and human beings.

Set apart from debates and initiatives focused on strengthening nature conservation, these ideas remain particularly relevant because they aim to establish the foundations of a science of human settlements on Earth—one that prioritises the preservation of its fundamental balances.

Soil is a functional interface of all terrestrial environments, whether natural, agricultural, or urban. To understand soil, its role, and its functions, it is essential to place it within the broader functioning of ecosystems. The first part will focus on the principles of ecosystem functioning, soil formation, and the properties that determine how humans use them.Urban soils are often degraded, contaminated, and scarce in cities. The second part will explore their crucial role in water and climate regulation, as well as potential strategies for their rehabilitation.

Urban Soils: (Part of) the Solution for Sustainable Cities?

The social metabolism of our capitalist industrial economies is strictly unsustainable. Post-growth now constitutes the essential horizon of our time. We must imagine other forms of economy – or rather, we must finally apply the knowledge that we already have, and that a series of actors in our societies persist in ignoring or distorting. Short-term opportunism and the structural injustice of extractive capitalism combine with existential fears of finitude and death to keep our political and economic elites, but also the majority of citizens, in denial of the necessities of life. the decrease. Based on the approach based on socio-ecological metabolisms, and in particular invoking the imagination of the “solarpunk” movement while drawing inspiration from the socio-economic implications of “terror management theory”, we will reflect on the obstacles and fears which currently block the ecological transition and we will explore ways out of these blockages.

infos to come

Information to come

The idea is to provide an overview of global challenges with three main entries: climate change, the collapse of biodiversity, especially arthropods, and a state of resources with some key benchmarks. We will also address the democratic, social and cultural context within which responses to the challenges must be constructed. We will then sketch out some possible solutions by focusing on three main axes: the economy with the idea of permacircularity, democratic institutions, and finally the cultural shift that is currently taking place.

Developing a more sustainable way of life is one of the most urgent tasks facing our planet and its inhabitants. While the majority of people are now aware of such issues, such as climate change or biodiversity loss, too little is being done to translate this knowledge into concrete and sustainable action. To promote the necessary behavior changes, research is studying the determinants of sustainable behavior, and policymakers have started to apply behavioral knowledge to develop new intervention strategies. In this presentation, we will discuss the most recent psychological knowledge about the factors that can motivate people to take sustainable actions or that can hinder those actions. Different intervention strategies aimed at promoting sustainable action, such as information provision, motivational approaches and “nudges” will be presented and discussed.

The climate crisis and the drastic loss of biodiversity are the most serious problems of our time. The construction industry is responsible for a major part of the man-made climate change. For us, as architects, this means that we have the possibility, and even the obligation, to make a difference for the future generations by changing our practices. Sustainability has to become an important criteria in the everyday decision-making of architects. This results in completely new draft and design concepts.

Water resources are essential for humanity. Today, major challenges concerning water resources include the identification of the spatial and temporal dynamics of water availability and how these are impacted by climate change and anthropogenic pressure. The vulnerability and resilience of water resources depend on their geographic context, from mountains to plains, across arid to humid climates, and the extent of impact from water abstraction. The course covers these general themes and concludes with a special focus on the Greater Geneva Region. This will include the role of water supply from Lake Geneva and its surrounding glaciers, the impacts of climate change such as severe glacier retreat, heatwaves, and droughts, as well as groundwater lowering. The course ends with perspectives on responsible water management.

Our quest is the establishment of a design culture that has the healing, sustenance of the planet’s life support capacity as its very aim. This vision is still Utopian to some, but has become reality for many others. The four enabling realms of regenerative design, technology, finance and planning inform this intensive session – crafting our collective habitat while working to support planetary habitability. This session encompasses all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and pursues RCP 0 and SSP 1. These are the hallmarks of the Liechtenstein Institute for Strategic Development’s teaching and practice: www.eurisd.de; www.eurisd.org; www.uet2.com.

More than civilization is at stake: the very home of life is. All of evolution depends on a stable climate, and the very design and direction of our culture, economy, society, cities and the built environment at large are now being challenged in the very ways they are conceived and perform.

Information to come

Review session of the introductory part of the Theory Masterclass and visit to the neighborhood selected for the Design Studio.

Our entry into the Anthropocene, this new geological epoch which follows the Holocene, and in which humans are the main forces of change on the planet, requires a profound renewal of the social sciences, and geopolitics is primarily concerned by this revolution. It is now becoming impossible to distinguish between the Earth and the world, which would only be the political and social organization of the planet.

For a long time, environmental issues were kept out of politics: the Earth was ruled by physical and biological laws, while the world was ruled by political and economic laws. This separation has notably led to the current ecological crisis, which has made many geologists say that we have now changed geological epochs. In the Anthropocene, the laws of nature overtook those of human history and geography.

And this transformation of human relations with the Earth requires, in order to think about this new Earth, to invent a new geopolitics, or – to use an expression of Bruno Latour – a Gaïapolitics: literally, an Earth policy.

The Swiss Data Cube is a new digital technology for efficiently organizing Earth observation data (in particular satellite data) by gathering all satellite images in space and time for a given period and a specific region. Switzerland is the second country in the world to have a “data cube” after Australia. There are numerous possibilities for analyzing this standardized data and for applications, particularly in monitoring the evolution of the territory in order to anticipate the future. In addition, the algorithms developed on this platform are shared and can be reused for various projects. In this presentation, we will explain how this technology is used to help decision-makers better understand environmental issues (and in particular the impacts of climate change) . Thus ideally descision-makers can make decisions based on evidence.

The climate is changing much more rapidly than any model could have predicted, because human activities are increasing the use of fossil fuels every year. Extreme events are becoming stronger and more frequent. The process can be slowed down, but there is no going back. The built environment is a key element in both adapting to these changes and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

A detailed analysis of the architectural theories and projects that contributed to the construction of cities and landscapes in the 20th century reveals two opposing tensions: on the one hand, the choice to support the economic exploitation of natural resources; on the other hand, the refusal to do so in the name of an early ecological awareness. These two tendencies not only manifested themselves as contrasts between different professional groups and cultural movements, but even as sometimes indistinguishable parts of the biography of the same author. In the face of these ambivalences, excavating the vestiges of modernity is now more necessary than ever to reinvest the capital that architectural theories and projects have accumulated along the complex path of industrial society.

infos to come

Energy is omnipresent, in the form of the most various demands, which can be satisfied from diverse resources, through a myriad of transformers allowing extraction, transport, storage and adaptation to the desired use. During this conference we will present the basic concepts and challenges for understanding the energy system as a whole, with a focus on the domain of buildings (which represents a good 40% of the demand of our societies). Within this framework, we will discuss the challenges related to renewable energies (decarbonization) as well as the decrease in demand (efficiency, sobriety).

Infos à venir

In this course, we explore the evolution of the concept of Ecosystem Services highlighted in the 2005 UN report entitled “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment” which led to the creation of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) ten years later. We will analyse the data and tools used to quantify and map these services, and we will examine the limitations of this approach when addressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This reflection will lead us to the concept of the Nexus formed by the different SDGs and their dependence on services provided by nature.

Review session of the introductory part of the Theory Masterclass and visit to the neighborhood selected for the Design Studio.

Reception of the participants, presentation of the Fondation Braillard Architectes and its missions on the one hand, and of the philosophy, expectations and modalities of the Transition Workshop on the other. Thus are laid the premisses for interactive and collaborative work combining scientific knowledge, strategic foresight and conceptual and technical know-how in an unparalleled  way, with the aim of eventually integrating the group into the active community of Transition Fellows.

In tribute to James Lovelock and Bruno Latour, this introduction to the 2025 season propses an articulation between environmental emergencies, the innovative potential of the design disciplines and the pathways towards the decarbonization and resilience of cities and regions in the short, medium and long term.

Why do we need to measure the progress of the ecological transition? How has the climate and its warming led us to establish a whole new generation of impact metrics and – even more importantly – of accountability metrics in these areas? In what crucial ways does decarbonization differ from resilience when we get to measure them? These questions will be addressed through a brief recourse to history, physics, chemistry, biology, but also to economics, the sociology of actors and, last but not least, design and planning. The objective is to arm participants with cross–knowledge tools, to help them build their own lines of reasoning for their future practice as transition strategists.

Coordination session about the third part of the Theory Masterclass.

Infos à venir

In this lecture we will cover different approaches to ensuring that biodiversity and climate related concerns are integrated into projects and plans. First, we will discuss theoretical notions such as negative externalities and telescoping that are particularly relevant in developed cities such as Geneva. Then, we will cover different visions of sustainability, existing targets (for both climate and biodiversity), possible pathways to reach these targets, and indicators that measure progress. Finally, we look at existing tools that can mainstream biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The ecological transition through urban planning is a challenge that seems to be structural today in the way of engaging matter, flows and resources (including human ones) on a large scale. An in-depth understanding of the actors’ issues, and a selection of research and projects undertaken within the Habitat Research Center, often gathered under the term Horizontal Metropolis in several European sites (Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, etc.) will be presented and discussed with the participants.

Architects, urbanists, engineers and even landscape designers are trained to focus on building the places and spaces we live in, thus externalizing key aspects dealing with agriculture, ecology and food. So urbanisation typically ignores food needs and disables food growing. The first ambition of this workshop is to introduce a number of universal principles and concepts comings from systems ecology applied to agriculture and our agrarian past, present and future. While doing this, a wealth of further readings will be suggested to indeed further feed a food-enabling urbanism. The second ambition is to give practical hints for personal and collective regrounding toward genuine “food care” overall. Taken together, these elements should unlock fresh pathways to tackle our common 21st century challenges, through the prism of food.

Our economies are doing Bernie Madoff pyramid schemes with the planet (we are taking the resources of the future to pay for the present). As a result, humanity’s demand on nature today exceeds what Earth can replenish, eroding our natural capital and jeopardizing future regeneration of resources. Like any such system, this one, if not followed, can only lead to collapse. Such a catastrophe would destroy much of the progress of mankind.

Coordination session about the third part of the Theory Masterclass.

Review session for the second part of the Theory Masterclass