MAP 23: Position(s) —
Master Architecture Projects
with Lou Rais (Graphic Design) and Eliott Hounieux, EPFL, October 2023
MAP, Master Architecture Projects, is an association of students in their final year of architecture at EPFL. Each year, it promotes its diploma projects through an exhibition and a publication.
This year's MAP pays tribute to work that is rendered invisible by the codes of architectural representation. Each Master's project is the result of in-depth research, rigorous work and a resolute spirit that drawing, in all its evocative power, fails to bring to light. The process of realization, lurking in the shadows, remains silent. It is this silence that we seek to bring to our ears. With this in mind, MAP is not exhaustive in its illustration of student projects, nor is it intended to be a paper version of the EPFL living archive. It aims rather at showing the other side of the story, the invisible threads of the project, starting with its theoretical foundation, and not least: the theoretical statement.
Indeed, for each student, the project description in this publication systematically refers to the title of the theoretical statement, the research work carried out throughout the winter semester and which takes the form of a dissertation in a very free format. Its thematic framework, working methodology and lines of research are entirely defined by the student. Above all, this work is an opportunity to deepen and broaden the field of research, to offer a better understanding of the themes we are passionate about, in a previously unknown format. For most students, the theoretical statement is above all a sounding board for the Master's project. It provides a snapshot of the current state of a given theme, giving the depth of field needed to contextualize and develop the project. In this way, the master's project is the culmination of a process of reflection that began more than a year ago in a theoretical statement, and whose breath will live on in the selective archive that is MAP.
This publication accompanies and acts as a counterpoint to the MAP 23 exhibition opening at La Rasude frpm October 7 to 28, 2023. It is itself an exhibition space, the fruit of a montage. What is presented is a table of research, a multiplicity of work processes and paths, shown in their continuity and diversity. We can read the progress of a collective investigation, its hypotheses and trial and error, divergent intuitions but also areas of encounter between several individual proposals. Through the confrontation and reconciliation of texts and images, we are able to grasp the polyphony of reality, the dissonant and fragmented way in which it presents itself to us.
In the space of a few pages, we seek to reveal the uniqueness of a flight, to mark an awareness and a stance, while highlighting the uniqueness of each individual.
More info on the MAP (@map_epfl)
Ackowledgments:
Lou Rais (Graphic Design)
EPFL Reproduction Center (Printing)
Corinne Waridel (Coordination)
Nadja Maillard (Copyediting)
Ghita Ouassini (Videography)
Dominique Bartels (Videography)
Justine Willa (Videography)
Julien Heil (Photography)
MAP 23 Comity
22-23 EPFL Architecture Graduates (Project Contributions)