LECTURES

ECAL Lecture - Rineke Dijkstra,
07.05.2025,
Auditoire IKEA, ECAL

ECAL welcomes Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra for a talk on her contemporary approach to portraiture.

LECTURES

Masterclass ECAL – Albert Serra,
06.05.2025,
Auditoire Leenaards, ECAL

ECAL, in collaboration with the Cinémathèque Suisse and Sister Distribution, welcomes filmmaker Albert Serra for a talk.

LECTURES

SPRING WORKSHOP 2025 – lectures,
28–30.04.2025,
Auditoire IKEA, ECAL

During the spring semester workshop week, ECAL invites international artists and designers to present their work.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Nnormal × ECAL

with Nicolas Poillot

In September 2024, the start of the academic year was marked by the launch of a collaboration with the trail equipment brand Nnormal. At the same time, Kilian Jornet, the brand’s founder, made headlines by climbing 82 Alpine peaks over 4,000 meters, setting a new record. Like trail running, photography requires passion, discipline, and endurance. The Bachelor Photography students may not be athletes, but they pursue their own visual feats, pushing boundaries to craft a unique language in an image-saturated world. ECAL has a long tradition of collaborating with top-level professionals who are eager to share their experience with a new generation in search of direction. One such figure is Régis Tosetti, artistic director at Nnormal and a former Visual Communication graduate at ECAL, who initiated the project alongside Nicolas Poillot, head coach and art director, known for his blend of fashion and documentary work. A longtime guest lecturer at ECAL, Nicolas has guided students with clarity and precision through the brand’s visual identity. In a noisy world overloaded with stimuli, this collaboration offered students an escape into the mountains—a space for communion, imagination, and adventure. There, bodies and landscapes meet, connected by the shoes that allow us to go further. But beyond the object itself, the students’ projects express ecological values, contrasting atmospheres, organic and technical textures, and bodies straining toward effort and release. And as in trail running, despite careful preparation, the unexpected often leads to new forms of beauty.

PARTNERSHIP

ECAL at the World Expo 2025 in Osaka

HUG: ECAL's Swiss chair for the World Expo 2025 in Osaka from 13 April to 13 October 2025.

EXHIBITIONS

Hum Hum Magazine,
12–30.04.2025,
Treize, Paris

HUM HUM MAGAZINE, created by ECAL students, is a nomadic exhibition-publication whose first issue unfolds at Treize.

AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS

28 ECAL graduates shortlisted for the 2025 Swiss Design Awards

ECAL is delighted to announce that 28 of its graduates are among the finalists for the 2025 Swiss Design Awards, a prestigious distinction awarded by the Federal Office of Culture. This selection is further testament to the quality and diversity of the talent trained at the university.

ONLINE

ECAL MASTER DXD PORTFOLIO REVIEWS,
08–09.04.2025,
Online

This event is open to future candidates for the new Master in Digital Experience Design who wish to obtain a preliminary opinion on their application.

EXHIBITIONS

Folklore Fusion,
08–13.04.2025,
Spazio Orso 16, Milan

ECAL presents Folklore Fusion at Milano Design Week 2025

EXHIBITIONS

Designed in CH, Made in JP,
08–13.04.2025,
House of Switzerland, Milan

ECAL in collaboration with Karimoku New Standard and Presence Switzerland presents Designed in CH, Made in Japan at Milan Design Week 2025

EXHIBITIONS

ECAL MILANO 2025 – EXHIBITIONS BY ALUMNI,
08–13.04.2025,
Salon du meuble de Milan

Selection of exhibitions with ECAL graduates at Milan Design Week 2025.

LECTURES

ECAL Lecture & Workshop – Cecilia Bengolea & Trajal Harrell,
07–09.04.2025,
Auditoire IKEA, ECAL

ECAL welcomes Cecilia Bengolea and Trajal Harrell for a talk and workshop exploring body, dance, and self-representation.

LECTURES

VISIONS DU RÉEL: MASTERCLASS & ECAL FILMS,
04–13.04.2025,
Nyon

As guest of honour at the 56th edition of the Visions du Réel festival in Nyon, filmmaker Raoul Peck will be giving a masterclass on Tuesday 8 April, organised in partnership with the Cinémathèque suisse. The programme also includes five films by the ECAL's Cinema Department and alumni.

DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP

Watches and Wonders Geneva 2025 ECAL x Ceramaret

At the invitation of Watches and Wonders Geneva, ECAL will present a brand-new project in partnership with Ceramaret, a leading Swiss company in the manufacture and high-precision machining of technical ceramics. To mark the occasion, a selection of five jewellery and bracelet designs will be on display at the LAB, a venue dedicated to innovation and design. Thanks to this first collaboration with the Neuchâtel-based manufacturer, students in MAS Design for Luxury and Craftsmanship got to discover a state-of-the-art machine park. Renowned for developing and producing components for the luxury watchmaking industry, Ceramaret’s teams contributed their expertise to this ambitious research. Combining innovation with creativity, the project brings together the know-how of specialised engineers in materials science and the boundless inventiveness of an up-and-coming generation of designers. Following the presentation of the students’ 15 concepts, five designs were selected and prototyped in technical ceramics, using additive technologies – a 3D printing process that provides the possibility to create intricate, previously unimaginable shapes. This collection, including bracelets inspired by fine watchmaking and innovative jewellery designs, draws its inspiration as much from the beauty of organic forms as from the complexity of systems derived from engineering.

PHOTOGRAPHY

ECAL × SDOL, Horizon Ouest, Regards sur la métamorphose urbaine

with Matthieu Gafsou

New transport infrastructure is emerging, while former industrial wastelands are giving way to modern buildings and redesigned outdoor spaces. Gradually, residents are moving into these new neighborhoods and adopting new habits.  To capture the first moments of life in these spaces, the association "Ouest lausannois: Prix Wakker 2011" has invited second-year students from the ECAL Bachelor of Photography program to observe them throughout 2024. This project highlights 18 ongoing construction sites or recently completed neighborhoods. Through their perspectives, the students offer original approaches to discovering, understanding, and appropriating these new spaces.  Photography maintains a unique relationship with the world around us, as it often depends on it. Far from merely documenting reality in a strict sense, it has the power to transfigure and reveal the invisible or the unspeakable. This is the approach adopted by the ECAL photography students at the request of the "Ouest lausannois: Prix Wakker 2011" association, as they explored various territories in western Lausanne. As part of this commission, each student was randomly assigned a specific location—be it a new neighborhood, a construction site, or a distinctive building—on which they worked over an academic year. Faced with spaces that were sometimes unphotogenic or even resistant to imagery, the challenge was to look beyond appearances, to resonate with these places in order to grasp their unique dynamics. The photographs question our perception of these recent landscapes and bear witness to the human activity unfolding within them. What do they reveal about our ways of living and moving? Who are the people inhabiting these spaces? What new landscapes emerge from these rapid transformations?  Through approaches that are sometimes sensitive and intimate, sometimes detached and analytical, or even driven by a formal fascination with the objects captured, the works presented reveal the density and diversity of everyday life. They bring forth a poetic vision of the city, inviting us to consider these territories not merely as functional backdrops but as fully-fledged spaces, rich with history, form, and identity—fluid and multifaceted, just like those who inhabit them.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Designed in CH Made in JP

with Augustin Scott de Martinville

Designed in CH, Made in JP is a collaborative project between ECAL Master Product Design, Karimoku New Standard, and Presence Switzerland. From 13 April to 13 October 2025, representatives from countries across the globe will gather to showcase innovation, culture, and sustainability at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan. For Switzerland’s pavilion, MA Product Design students at ECAL were tasked with designing a stackable wooden chair to be produced in Japan by Karimoku New Standard, intended to furnish the lightweight, bubble-inspired architecture by Manuel Herz. Under the guidance of Augustin Scott de Martinville, the class developed ten chair designs, each offering a distinct perspective. Some draw inspiration from the pavilion’s scenography, while others explore cultural iconography or celebrate the symbiosis between two nations—each unique in heritage yet united by shared values of craftsmanship and innovation. Of the ten designs, one was selected to be produced for the pavilion: HUG, designed by Jacob Kouthoofd Martensson and Min Xiyao, is a circular chair that stacks inversely—a feature that not only informs its name but also visually embodies the essence of collaboration. This versatile design accommodates a range of uses, from conferences to general pavilion seating. The final chair will be unveiled both in Osaka in the Swiss Pavilion at the World Expo 2025, and during Milan Design Week 2025, with the full project exhibited at the House of Switzerland.

AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS

Swiss Film Award : two ECAL film graduates honoured

Klaudia Reynicke and Mégane Brügger win the ‘Best Feature Film’ and ‘Best Graduation Film’ awards respectively.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

PHOTOGRAPHY

ECAL Night Live

with Vincent Veillon, Paul Walther, Florian Pittet (Sigmasix), Vincent Jacquier, Julien Gurtner

During an intensive week, first-year students from the Visual Communication department at ECAL had the opportunity to create and produce the first edition of ECAL Night Live. The goal was to design a show inspired by satirical television formats. Divided into multidisciplinary teams—including students from the Bachelor programs in Graphic Design, Media & Interaction Design, and Photography—they collaborated to create all the content, set design, and visual identity of the show, delivering a fully homemade project in record time. The main theme revolved around self-mockery, targeting the visual communication professions, students, and the institution itself, with a subtle touch of current events. This project was supervised by Vincent Veillon and Paul Walther, directors of the RTS show 52 Minutes, as well as Florian Pittet, a digital scenography expert who guided the creation of the show's set design.

ANNOUNCEMENT

ECAL AT MILAN DESIGN WEEK 2025

ECAL presents two exhibitions at Milano Design Week 2025

PHOTOGRAPHY

Fine Art Photography

with Natacha Lesueur

Vulgar First, it is photography that would be considered vulgar: due to its technical mediation (the infamous photographic click-clack), its commercial uses (press, advertising, and fashion), its dissemination, and its reproduction, photographic activity is tainted with vulgarity. A minor art, an art that does nothing more than imitate art?

PARTNERSHIP

HEAT PUMPS FOR VIESSMANN

For Viessmann, ECAL Master Product Design students are rethinking the aesthetics of heat pumps, combining innovation with harmonious integration into the urban landscape.

AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS

La Mobilière 2025 Prize awarded to Alfatih

Congratulations to ECAL graduate artist Alfatih, who was awarded the Prix La Mobilière 2025 at the recent Salon Art Genève.

ANNOUNCEMENT

New Master en Digital Experience Design

ECAL is launching a MA in Digital Experience Design (DXD), which will start in autumn 2025. This ambitious programme meets a growing demand for professionals in the field of new technologies.

ANNOUNCEMENT

SADAO E-learning platform

SADAO: a brand new open access self-assessment platform. Challenge your art and design knowledge now!

ANNOUNCEMENT

CERTIFICATE OF ADVANCED STUDIES – CREATIVE LEADERSHIP 2025

After the success of Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) Creative Leadership in 2024, the registrations are now open for 2025 until the 26.11.2024.

AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS

Sara De Brito Faustino winner of the Prix Françoise Champoud 2024

Congratulations to photographer Sara De Brito Faustino, ECAL graduate, who wins the Prix Françoise Champoud 2024, an award that will support the development of her promising artistic career.