Teaching placed front and center on EPFL's Lausanne campus

Bird's eye view on the new building. Dominique Perrault Architecte - ADAGP The Lausanne campus will soon get 1,500 more lecture hall seats thanks to the construction of a new building and the makeover of the Coupole. The winning design came from Dominique Perrault, whose firm was selected through a parallel bidding process among architects worldwide © Dominique Perrault Architecte / ADAGP It's not easy to spot the new building embedded in the architectural plans - proof of how seamlessly it fits into the campus's sloping landscape. The planned structure will include modular lecture halls of 200'500 seats each and will be housed mainly where the Esplanade's underground parking garage is currently located, right in the middle of EPFL's Lausanne campus. The construction work will take place from 2025 to 2028. At the same time, the Coupole will be entirely revamped, with structural changes and energy-efficiency improvements. The expanded lecture hall capacity comes in response to the steep growth in EPFL's student body, expected to double from 7,400 in 2010 to around 15,000 in 2026.