wire - news in brief

NEST unit nominated for architecture

Building with waste and recycled
A residential module fully constructed from reusable, recyclable, and compostable materials: This is the premise for the newest unit in NEST, the modular research and innovation building run by Empa and Eawag in Dübendorf.

Insulating with microscopic bubbles
Better thermal insulation means lower heating costs - but this should not be at the expense of exciting architecture.

Construction prototype for ultra-thin concrete roof
Researchers from ETH Zurich have built a prototype of an ultra-thin, curved concrete roof using innovative digital design and fabrication methods.

A tram to revitalize downtown Neuchâtel
Downtown areas of mid-sized cities are facing a growing challenge in maintaining their appeal. Taking Neuchâtel as an example, EPFL researchers have identified concrete steps these cities can take to make sure their downtown area remains attractive for years to come.

15 new professors
At its meeting of 17 May 2017, the ETH Board appointed 15 new professors upon application of ETH Zurich President Lino Guzzella.

How does trust work on the internet?
A secure and reliable internet generates trust. Just how the internet creates trust is a matter for debate between ETH computer scientists and social scientists - for example, in a public session on 9 May 2017.

Preserving alpine architecture through drawings
A new publication, a panel discussion and projects by EPFL students consider the future of alpine villages and their often-abandoned architectural heritage - particularly their emblematic granaries.

NEST receives SIA Umsicht award

Building a nomadic pavilion out of old skis
Could recovered materials play a key role in tomorrow‘s civil engineering' EPFL researchers set out to answer that question by creating an easily demountable pavilion out of more than 200 reclaimed skis.

Building a nomad pavilion out of old skis
Could recovered materials play a key role in tomorrow‘s civil engineering' EPFL researchers set out to answer that question by creating an easily demountable pavilion out of more than 200 reclaimed skis.

The school with the largest solar facade in the world
The Copenhagen International School's new building is covered by 12,000 colored solar panels based on a technology developed at EPFL.

Bringing energy-hungry buildings up to date
As buildings evolve from energy consumers to energy producers, architecture is seeing a major paradigm shift, with building renovations becoming a real challenge.

The lab that's betting on low-tech
From the Saint Loup Chapel in Pompaples to the soon-to-be-completed Vidy Theatre Pavilion in Lausanne, the lab run by Yves Weinand is developing new innovations based on an age-old material: wood.

An innovative window system earns a European patent
A window-glazing system developed by an EPFL team uses micro-mirrors to improve the lighting and visual comfort inside buildings and could also make window blinds obsolete one day.

Reconciling solar energy and heritage preservation
Maria Cristina Munari Probst created a database of examples of solar panels that either fit or do not fit harmoniously in their urban setting.

An opportunity for the university district and ETH Zurich
Zurich's central university district continues to take shape. A joint press conference was held today by the canton and city of Zurich, University Hospital, the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich to provide information on the planning status.

Three public spaces at the intersection of science and art

ETH alumnus becomes head of real estate

Architecture freshmen build a giant wooden pavilion on campus
13.06.16 - The pavilion combines the outcome of twelve first-year architecture design studios into a single three-dimensional exploration of space.

A second life for the IOC building
17.02.16 - EPFL students have come up with ideas on reusing materials from the IOC headquarters and the future Olympic village for the 2020 Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne.

Singapore’s most energy efficient office by 2018
The recent completion of construction, and first month of successful operation of the 3for2@UWCSEA demonstration project by ETH Zurich turns the page in developing what could be Singapore's most energy-efficient office by 2018.

New paradigms for urbanisation
The Biennale for Urban Development and Architecture opens in Shenzhen today. Two architecture professors from ETH Zurich are co-curators, and the university is making several contributions to the exhibition.

EPFL houses treasures from Vaud's heritage

Straw Houses in the Front Line of Sustainable Construction
For the first time ever, an EPFL laboratory has carried out a complete energy analysis of a straw house, from planting the grass to the destruction of the materials.

Collide @ CERN laureate, Bill Fontana, begins residency at CERN
Geneva, 26 June 2013. The second winner of Prix Ars Electronica Collide @ CERN , American sound sculptor, Bill Fontana 2 , begins his arts residency at CERN 3 on 4 July 2013.

Thinking out of the box pays off !
Best Paper Award at the 20th ACM/SIGDA International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays for the Processor Architecture Laboratory team.

Nanoelectronics: Ferroelectric devices show potential
News and Views The quest for a non-volatile memory technology that offers high storage density, high read and write speeds, and low power consumption has triggered intense research into new materials, mechanisms and device architectures. Among the successful memory technologies to emerge from these efforts have been the atomic switch, the resistive RAM and the magnetic tunnel junction.

IEEE Micro's special issue: Boris Grot is part of it !
News in brief Boris Grot from the Parallel Systems Architecture Laboratory (PARSA) has been published in the last IEEE Micro's special issue; Top Picks from Computer Architecture Conferences. His paper "Kilo-NOC: A Heterogeneous Network-on-Chip Architecture for Scalability and Service Guarantees" has been written with collaborators from the University of Texas, NVIDIA and Carnegie Mellon University.

"Minergie in the UAE, We are taking advantage of our experiences"
Jean-Louis Scartezzini, head of EPFL's Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory, is passionate about Minergie—a Swiss label for energy consumption in buildings and the most widely applied building energy standard in the world with almost 20,000 buildings.

Giving concrete infrastructure a second life
Rather than just fixing corroding concrete infrastructure, Professor Eugen Brühwiler and his team of engineers have shown that it can be improved using ultra-high performance fiber reinforced concrete.

3 new IC Professors elevated to IEEE Fellows in 2012
Babak Falsafi, Pascal Fua and Emre Telatar have been elevated to IEEE Fellows this year. This brings the number of IC professors who are IEEE Fellows to ten, a quarter of the faculty.

Clearing the Clouds.
Clearing the Clouds: A Study of Emerging Workloads on Modern Hardware. The emergence of global-scale online services has galvanized scale-out software, characterized by splitting vast datasets and massive computation across many independent servers. In a paper appearing in ASPLOS 2012, Profs.

Le Corbusier, a revised vision of the architect and his work
Roberto Gargiani unveils a different vision of Switzerland's most famous architect - Le Corbusier. Published at EPFL Press.

Bahrain goes to Tokyo

Teaching Architecture

A helium full moon to shelter a music and dance festival
EPFL has designed an architectural project intended to welcome the audience and performers at the St Prex Classics festival.

New leadership in architecture
Luca Ortelli is the new director of the Institute of Architecture and the City in EPFL's School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC).

UAE Swiss Research Day

15 Moore’s years. 3D chip stacking will take Moore’s Law past 2020
Zurich, Switzerland, 9 March 2010 —Some laws are made to be broken, and others are made to be followed.

Test lab for cities of tomorrow in Singapore
28.10.2009 / Zurich - ETH Zürich . ETH Zurich is stepping up its commitment in Asia: from mid-2010, a novel platform for urban development is to be established in Singapore in the form of the "Future Cities Laboratory".

New Monte Rosa Hut SAC opens its doors
25.09.2009 / Zurich - ETH Zürich . The "hut of the future" is finished. After about six years on the drawing board - two of which as a student project design - and a construction phase spanning two summers, the New Monte Rosa Hut above Zermatt is finally open for business.