Team

Nitin studied urban design at ETH Zurich and architecture at the Institute of Environmental Design in India. His PhD research focuses on investigating circular migration to Indian cities as an emerging phenomenon of extended urbanisation. Between 2013-2016, he worked in India under various capacities as a policy researcher and grassroots design practitioner. Prior to 2012, he worked as an architecture and planning practitioner in India and Africa. His interests lie in action research, transformative change making, and history and theory of migration.

Stefan Breit is an environmental scientist working in the fields of landscape architecture and future studies. He is particularly interested in the search “for a place to be” and how novel ideas can be anchored in the present. After his studies in environmental system sciences at ETH Zurich, he worked for five years as a researcher for the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute and developed scenarios for the future development of living, environment, and infrastructure. He’s also part of the collective around Cima Città, a residency space in an old chocolate factory in Ticino. At the Chair of Being Alive, he is researching regenerative practices and fieldwork methodologies.

Alice joined the Architecture of Territory Chair in 2023. She studied Architecture at TU Dublin where she was awarded First Class Honors and received the Mont Kavanagh Scholarship for her Thesis. Alice gained extensive practical experience at Grafton Architects in Dublin, Ireland where she worked on small- and large-scale public projects including the Parnell Square Cultural Quarter in Dublin, Ireland. She returned to university to complete the MAS Urban and Territory Design in ETH and EPFL which explored ecology and circular design at a territorial scale. In 2019 she co-founded the research and spatial design collective BothAnd Group. The primary motivation of their work is in understanding the behaviour of living systems and aim to embed the logic of biospherical systems into their work.

Nancy Couling is an architect and urban researcher, currently Associate Professor at Bergen School of Achitecture, after holding a Marie Curie Postdoc Fellowship at the TU Delft, Chair of History of Architecture and Urban Planning 2017-19, and defending her doctoral thesis at the EPFL, Switzerland in 2015. Since collaboration at laba EPFL, her research focus has been the urbanisation of the sea. This topic is linked to urgent questions which Nancy has also approached through teaching and as an experienced architectural and urban design practitioner; linking design practice through all scales, analysing complex contexts and designing with strategies of time. Her interdisciplinary and intercultural skills have been gained through direct experience in diverse cultural contexts since departing her native New Zealand.

Muriz holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from EPF Lausanne with a focus on urban and territorial planning. After graduating at Laboratory Basel in 2016, he joined Herzog & de Meuron in Basel and gained first experiences working on various international projects ultimately focusing on territorial, urban and infrastructural planning. As a project manager he was responsible for the winning competition for Ronquoz 21. His diploma thesis “Atlas of Overexploited Territories – Baltic Sea” investigated the urbanisation of sea territories and their extensive operational landscapes as part of the worldwide urban fabric. His research has been exhibited at the Baltic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2016 and published in The Baltic Atlas (2016). As co-founder and former editor at Atlas of Places, he has lectured and taught workshops at USI Mendrisio (2017) and Transitional Territories, Delta Urbanism at TU Delft (2019). In 2020, he joined Architecture of Territory where he is part of the research and teaching team.

Prof. Teresa Galí-Izard was born in Barcelona in 1968. She received degrees in Agricultural Engineering and a Postgraduate in Landscape Architecture from Escuela Superior de Agricultura de Barcelona, Polytechnic University of Catalonia. Galí-Izard is principal of ARQUITECTURA AGRONOMIA, a landscape architecture firm founded in 2007 with Jordi Nebot located in Barcelona. Over the past 20 years she has been involved in landscape architecture projects in Europe including TMB Park, Coastal Park, the new urbanization of Passeig de Sant Joan in Barcelona and the Sant Joan Landfill restoration, which won the European Urban Public Space award in 2004. Gali-Izard has taught in both the United States and Europe. She was appointed as Full Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Institute for Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS) at ETH Zurich in 2019, initiating the masters program in landscape architecture. Gali-Izard was Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 2018-2019. She was Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at University of Virginia from 2012-2018 and Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture from 2013-2015.

Karoline Kostka studied landscape planning and open space design at the Technical University Berlin, the ETH Zurich and the School of Design, Mysore. She practised landscape architecture and regional planning in Germany and Switzerland. Before moving to the ETH Zurich in 2015, she worked as a Researcher at the Chair of Architecture and Territorial Planning and the Chair of Territorial Organization at the ETH Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore from 2013–15. Currently, she works as the project coordinator for the FCL Global research project Territories of Extended Urbanisation.

Christoph Küffer is Professor for Urban Ecology at the Landscape School in HSR Rapperswil and a lecturer at ETH D-USYS and D-ARCH. He studied environmental science at ETH Zurich obtaining a PhD there on the topic of plant ecology and is currently teaching ecology under global climate change. His research focuses on urban ecology in anthopogenic landscapes, and the ecology of the anthropocene.

Christian Schmid studied Geography and Sociology at the University of Zurich. He has authored, co-authored and co-edited numerous publications on Zurich’s urban development, on international comparative analysis of urbanisation, and on theories of the city and of space. In 1991, he was a cofounder of the International Network for Urban Research and Action (INURA). In 1993-94, he was a fellow researcher at the Laboratoire de Géographie Urbaine, Université Paris X Nanterre, and in 1995-96 he worked in the interdisciplinary research project La ville: villes de crise ou crise des villes, Institute d’Architecture, Université de Genève. From 1997-2001 he was an assistant lecturer for economic geography and regional research at the Geography Department of the University of Bern. In 2003, he received his PhD from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. In 1999, he became scientific director of the project Switzerland: An Urban Portrait at the ETH Studio Basel. A book with the same title was published in 2005, authored by Roger Diener, Jacques Herzog, Marcel Meili, Pierre de Meuron and Christian Schmid. Since 2001, he has been a lecturer in Sociology at the D-ARCH, and since 2009 Titular Professor.

Milica Topalović is Associate Professor of Architecture and Territorial Planning at the ETH Department of Architecture. From 2011-15 she held a research professorship at the ETH Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, studying the relationship between a city and its hinterland. In 2006 she joined the ETH as head of research at Studio Basel Contemporary City Institute and the professorial chairs held by Diener and Meili, where she taught research studios on cities and on territories such as Hong Kong and the Nile Valley. Milica graduated with distinction from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade and received a Master’s degree from the Dutch Berlage Institute for her thesis on Belgrade’s post-socialist urban transformation. Since 2000, she worked on projects in different spatial scales and visual media. With Studio Basel she authored and edited Belgrade. Formal / Informal: A Research on Urban Transformation, and The Inevitable Specificity of Cities. She contributes essays on urbanism, architecture and art to various magazines and publications.

Nazlı Tümerdem is an architect and researcher. She received her Bachelor’s degree (2008) from Istanbul Technical University and Master’s degree (2011) from Istanbul Bilgi University. She worked as an architect in various architectural offices and as a lecturer at several universities. In 2016, she was part of the team of Turkish Pavilion for the 15th Architecture Biennial of Venice. She completed her PhD entitled “Istanbul Walkabouts: A Critical Walking Study of Northern Istanbul”(2018) at Istanbul Technical University and continues performing walks around northern Istanbul for her independent walking project Istanbul Walkabouts. In September 2019, she joined the Chair of Architecture and Territorial Planning as a postdoctoral researcher holding the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship.

Bonnie-Kate Walker is a landscape architect from the United States. She is a research associate at the Chair of Being Alive at ETH Zurich, where she contributes to teaching and design research on practices, strategies, and ethics from regenerative agriculture and traditional land management. Through this work, she focuses on bottom-up and collective landscape strategies for a changing climate. She received her MLA from the University of Virginia, where she was the University Olmsted Scholar and received an ASLA Honor award. Prior to joining ETH, she worked as a landscape designer at Hargreaves Associates and Future Green Studio in New York City. She has taught at University of Pennsylvania, and been a reviewer at Harvard GSD, Pratt, and Ohio State. She is a co-founder of Office of Living Things, a landscape research and design collective that has worked on projects and competitions at a range of scales in Switzerland and the US, and is currently designing a center for liberatory education in upstate New York.

Elena Cogato Lanza is Professor at the Laboratory of Urbanism, Faculty ENAC, EPFL, after being member of the Construction and Conservation Laboratory. Her field of research is characterized by the intersection between the history of urbanism and the theory of urban and landscape design. Along with her research and teaching activities, she is intensely engaged in the editorial field, as founder of the collection vuesDensemble for Metispresses, and as a member of various international editorial boards.

Michael Fingleton is an architect, landscape architect and teaching assistant. He studied in both UCD Ireland and Hochschule Liechtenstein, receiving his degree in Architecture from University College Dublin, Ireland, in 2011, completing a project on the transformation of a canal into a new piece of post-industrial infrastructure. In Liechenstein he was involved in the inaugural publication of the Atlas of Urbanscape under the direction of Angelus Eisinger. Presently employed as a landscape architect, he has also worked in a number of countries since 2011; projects ranging from a new public square and civic offices for a commune on the edge of Zürich to landscape renewal and protection projects across Switzerland

Corentin Fivet is Professor of Architecture and Structural Design at EPF Lausanne, Switzerland, since 2016. Previously he worked for two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA. There he first worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Architecture and then as a lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Corentin Fivet holds a Master in Architectural Engineering and a PhD in Engineering Sciences from the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. At EPF Lausanne, Corentin Fivet is heading the Structural Xploration Lab. The lab’s research and teaching are driven by the need for more environmentally responsible building systems. Bridging the gap between architecture and structural engineering, the lab explores more sustainable implementations of load-bearing materials, new design methods for resource-efficient structural typologies, and exemplary historical practices of structural design. Corentin Fivet joined the NCCR Digital Fabrication in June 2018 as an associated investigator.

Vincent Kaufmann is associate professor of urban sociology and mobility at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Since 2011, he is also scientific director of the Mobile Lives Forum in Paris. After a master degree in sociology (Universtiy of Geneva) he did his Ph.D. at EPFL on rationalities underlying transport modal practices. Vincent Kaufmann has been invited lecturer at Lancaster University (2000-2001), Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris (2001-2002), Laval University, Québec (2008) Nimegen University (2010), Université de Toulouse Le Mirail (2011), Université Catholique de Louvain (2004-2018) and Tongji University in Shanghai (2018). There fields of research are: motility, mobility and urban life styles, links between social and spatial mobility, public policies of land planning and transportation. He recently published “Mobilité et libre circulation en Europe” (with Ander Audikana) Economica (2017).

Yves Kazemi holds a Msc in Forest Sience (EPF Zurich) and a Msc in Public Administration (IDEHAP Lausanne). Since 2004, he is leading the regional forest service of Lausanne where he oversees the management of round 4000 ha of urban and peri-urban forests. Mr. Kazemi is very much involved in supporting municipalities to increase their urban canopy cover and develop urban green infrastructure strategies and projects. In 2018, he achieved a directed study in urban forestry and green Infrastructure at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. In spring 2024, he will start a new faculty course ENV-462 Urban Green & Blue Infrastructure and Global Warming.

Hamed Khosravi is an architect, researcher and educator. He studied architecture in Tehran, holds a Postgraduate Master’s degree in Urbanism from TU Delft and IUAV, and gained his PhD from ‘The City as a Project’ programme at the Berlage Institute and TU Delft. He has been teaching in various schools of architecture, and currently teaches at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London. He is the author of Gabriel Guevrekian: The Elusive Modernist (2020), editor and co-author of Tehran- Life Within Walls (2017). He co-edited Aesthetics and Politics of Logistics (2019) and co-curated Tehran (2019). His recent book, Do You Remember How Perfect Everything Was? The Work of Zoe Zenghelis, is published by AA Publications in 2022.

Barbara Lambec is a French HMONP architect, heritage expert, researcher and educator at EPFL and visiting scholar at CCL (Cornell, NY). She specialized early on with a bachelor’s degree in Applied Arts in Paris (2004-2007). She studied Architecture at the École Nationale de la Ville et du Territoire de Marne-la-Vallée and at TU Eindhoven (2007-2012) and passed the jury of the Ordre des architectes (HMONP, 2013). She then specialized in Heritage at the National School of Paris Belleville (DSA, 2013-2015). She very early developed a passion for the banal and its necessary ingenuity due to the economy of means and therefore chose to work on existing Parisian buildings, carrying out more than a hundred projects of rehabilitations and structural repairs for condominiums (AAAE, 2014-2017 / ADDA, 2017-2020). She has been part of roundtables, cities and architects’ associations to defend recent heritage (1950-80’). Her dissertation research at the Structural Xploration Lab focuses on evaluating the reuse potential of building elements (2020-2024).

Loan Laurent is an architect and teaching assistant. He studied architecture, urban and territorial design at McGill University in Montreal and ENSA Paris-Belleville before graduating from EPFL in 2022, under the supervision of Prof. Paola Viganò. Since 2022, he has been a scientific assistant at the Habitat Research Center and the Lab-U at EPFL. Currently, he works as an architect with StudioPaolaViganò on transcalar projects ranging from urban to territorial scopes in the cross-border region of Greater Geneva.

Sébastien Marot holds a Master’s in Philosophy and a PhD in History. He has written extensively on the genealogy of contemporary theories in architecture, urban design and landscape architecture. He is currently a professor at the École d’Architecture de Paris-Est, and guest professor at the EPFL (Enac) and GSD Harvard (as part of a programme on the Countryside led by Rem Koolhaas and AMO). Editor-in-chief of Le Visiteur (from 1995 to 2002) and Marnes (since 2010), he has authored several books, such as Sub-Urbanism and the Art of Memory (AA Publications 2003) and the critical re-edition of Ungers and Koolhaas’s The City in the City: Berlin, A Green Archipelago (Lars Müller 2013).

Anna Pagani is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering (IEDE), University College London (UCL). Her research encompasses the fields of people-environment studies, housing studies, and systems thinking She holds a PhD from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Architecture and Science of the City. Previously, she was trained in architecture and building engineering in the Polytechnic Universities of Turin, Milan (Alta Scuola Politecnica ASP), Barcelona (UPC), and Lausanne (EPFL) and she worked as an architect and researcher in Shanghai, China. After her PhD, she was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Laboratory on Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems (HERUS), and at the Habitat Research Center (HRC), joining the Executive board of the research field ‘Healthy Habitats’. In 2022, she obtained funding from SNSF to lead a project entitled ‘A just transition towards housing sustainability: where architecture and systems science meet’. The project uses systems thinking tools to address the cobenefits and (un)intended consequences of social housing regeneration in London, specifically for sustainability and health.

Luca Pattaroni holds a PhD in Sociology from the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris). He is lecturer and researcher at the Laboratory of Urban Sociology (Lasur) in the Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne and the National Centre of Competence in Research North South. He is also associated to the Groupe de Sociologie Morale et Politique (EHESS, Paris). Confronting political philosophy and empirical sociology, his research and publications deal with the dynamic interrelations between urban order, pluralism and justice. His current work focus on urban conflicts, livelihood and habitat in southern cities and residential choice in Switzerland.

Tommaso Pietropolli is an architect, postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at EPFL. He graduated at Iuav University of Venice in 2015, and completed his PhD at EPFL in 2023, under the supervision of prof. Paola Viganò. Since January 2023, he coordinates the Habitat Research Center at EPFL. Over the last years, he has been participating, coordinating, or co-directing several academic research projects at the Laboratory of Urbanism, focusing on socio-ecological transition and the future of contemporary urbanization, such as “The Horizontal Metropolis” (EPFL, 2014-2018), “Soil and Labour, a new biopolitical project” (EPFL, 2018-2020), “Hors Zones à Batir, vers une infrastructure metropolitaine de continuité socio-écologique” (2021-2023). Since 2014 he teaches urban design studios and international workshops at IUAV Venice and EPFL. He has been jury member and invited speaker in several European universities. As an architect, he collaborates since 2015 with StudioPaolaViganò between Milan and Geneva, taking part in the design and reflections on various projects and at different scales, from the territorial scale to urban design masterplan and public spaces.

Luca Rossi is an urban water specialist, covering all aspects of the problematic from pollutant source identification and hydrological problems to impact assessment and definition of original technical solutions. He is specialized in online monitoring and sampling procedures, and is involved in multiple interdisciplinary research projects. Luca Rossi was senior scientist at the Ecological Engineering Laboratory ECOL from 2006-2013. From 2002-2006 he was group leader of EAWAG Urban Water Management, elaborating Swiss guidelines for urban storm water management. In 1999-2000 he was a Post-Doc researcher under an FNS grant at the Mobile Computing and Networking Research Laboratory of the École Polytechnique de Montréal.

Paola Viganò (born 1961 in Sondrio, Italy), is an italian architect and urbanist, currently professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and at the University of Venice (IUAV). Viganò received a PhD in architectural composition from the University of Venice (IUAV) in 1994. In 1998, she was named associate professor of urbanism at the Polytechnic University of Bari. She then moved back to the University of Venice (IUAV) in 2000 as an associate professor, where she was promoted to full professor in 2011. In 2013, she was named full professor in Urban Theory and Urban Design at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where she the Habitat Research Center since 2016. Viganò leads the laboratory of Urbanism (Lab-U) at EPFL. Viganò founded the architectural study Studio with Bernardo Secchi in 1990. Together, they participated in the elaboration of the urban master plans of many European cities (Bergamo, Siena, Antwerp, etc.), participated in the Lille 2030 and Montpellier 2040 projects and more recently to that of Grand Paris and the center of Brest metropolitan area. In 2013, Viganò was awarded with the French Grand Prix de l’Urbanisme.She received the International Batibouw Award in 2015, the Ultima Architecture Flemish Culture Prize in 2016 and a Gold Medal for Italian Architecture for her career in 2018. In 2016, she received a Doctor Honoris Causa degree from KU Leuven.