OTHER
ECAL opens its doors and invites you to discover its activities in the fields of Fine Arts, Cinema, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Digital Design, and Photography.
EXHIBITIONS
From November 21 to December 14, Ferme des Tilleuls hosts "Dark Matter", an exhibition by Laura Cipriano and Yannick de Kalbermatten, winners of the City of Renens 2025 Encouragement Prize.
LECTURES
ECAL Bachelor Fine Arts invites you to a two-phase day as part of the Parasonic : the transmission of fugitive aural practices research project.
EXHIBITIONS
Visit WARMER VISIONS at Paris Photo 2025, an exhibition inspired by Moncler's alpine heritage interpreted by ECAL Bachelor Photography students.
EXHIBITIONS
On the occasion of Paris Photo 2025, ECAL is collaborating with Paperboy Magazine on a special issue!On the occasion of Paris Photo 2025, ECAL is collaborating with Paperboy Magazine on a special issue!
ECAL MAP EVENTS
During Paris Photo 2025, ECAL will present a selection of its books at OFFPRINT Paris.
LECTURES
Immerse yourself in innovation and design during an inspiring evening organized by the Municipality of Renens as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, on November 12 at ECAL.
EXHIBITIONS
VU.CH, art in hospitals, is hosting an exhibition based on the RE.CHUV+ECAL project, led by ECAL for CHUV, which proposes a concrete approach to circular design.
FINE ARTS
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Joël Vacheron, Angelo Benedetto, Olympe Boutaghane, Francis Baudevin
Based on archives and experiences associated with Vibrations (1991–2013), this research analyses how the magazine's textual, graphic and photographic content provides insight into the challenges of communicating about popular music today.
LECTURES
As part of the Bachelor program workshop weeks, ECAL will host international artists and designers from November 3 to 12, 2025, to present their work.
EXHIBITIONS
From 31 October to 9 November, ECAL will be present at the GIFF Festival 2025.
with Patrick Keller, François Bovier, Erika Marthins
A comparative and practice-based study on the transformative effects at play in the digital and hybrid exhibition of a body of non-digital native artworks (some artworks by artist Nam June Paik serving as a mean of understanding).
FINE ARTS
FINE ARTS
MA CI
with Federico Nicolao
A collective exploration of the new relations between contemporary writing and artistic practice.
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS
Congratulations to ECAL Bachelor Industrial Design graduates Lena Bernasconi, winner of the FIT Impact Grant 2025, which rewards innovative projects at the intersection of design, sustainability, and social relevance.
with Maxwell Ashford
This project develops design for recycling textile-based goods, one of the most damaging waste streams, using contemporary toolsets to dismantle products into pure fractions.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Pauline Saglio, Christophe Guignard, Alain Bellet, Laura Nieder, Gaël Hugo, Lara Défayes
In remote alpine regions, access to reliable information — such as trail conditions or weather alerts — becomes difficult in the absence of network coverage. Trail Sync addresses this challenge through a participatory and decentralized approach: local information boxes, integrated into hiking infrastructure, are passively updated by hikers using an offline mobile application. Each person passing near a box synchronizes contextual data, leaving a digital trace that benefits those who follow. Reinforcing existing signage without increasing technological dependency, the system is rooted in the mountain values of collective responsibility and solidarity.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Pauline Saglio, Christophe Guignard, Alain Bellet, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Lara Défayes
“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” - Roy Batty, Blade Runner (1982). Many of the moments we share with our loved ones fade from memory when nothing brings them back to life. Little by little, they disappear. Memoria is a photo album application that explores the fragility of memory, and how we maintain — or allow to fade — our connections through it. Through a process of gradual disappearance, the people in our photos slowly fade if no new memories shared with them are added. To keep their faces visible, users are invited to regularly enrich their album with new shared moments.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Pauline Saglio, Christophe Guignard, Laura Nieder, Alain Bellet, Gaël Hugo, Lara Défayes
Before the rise of digital technology and social networks, everyday moments were captured on analog media and watched with family in one uninterrupted flow. These long VHS tapes, composed of successive sequences, gradually disappeared, victims of their obsolescence. Magnetic Fragments offers a way to rediscover these forgotten memories through a three-dimensional web interface, where each bubble represents a memory to explore and comment on. Designed for a private circle, the collaborative platform allows free navigation, revisiting each memory fragments in a dynamic way and breaking with the monotonous structure of past viewings. Magnetic Fragments thus becomes a space for intergenerational transmission, where the past is shared in the present.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Pauline Saglio, Christophe Guignard, Alain Bellet, Gaël Hugo, Lara Défayes, Laura Nieder
Unbubble is an interactive installation in which a robot explores a user’s smartphone to analyze their Instagram usage. This intrusive act highlights a paradox: if it’s rare to hand one’s phone to a machine, we nonetheless do so every day by letting algorithms collect our data. Our online habits shape a tailor-made reality that filters, sorts, suggests, and sometimes limits our horizons. Unbubble questions how our digital traces construct a fragmented image of ourselves — one that is then used to guide our choices, desires, and attention. The installation invites us to become aware of these mechanisms and opens up a space to imagine other narratives, other ways of navigating, and other worlds to explore beyond the paths laid out by algorithms.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Pauline Saglio, Christophe Guignard, Alain Bellet, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Lara Défayes
In a world where ecosystems are dying out and certain smells are evaporating, what is happening to the places and stories that gave them form? Spira Memoriae is an immersive olfactory experience in virtual reality that invites users to journey through a fragmented sensory world. Original fragrances, created in collaboration with perfumer Tennessee Macdougall, extend the reflection through the language of odours. Beacons of an abstract landscape, they reveal rare materials, sometimes extinct, but still present in our collective memory. Spira Memoriae explores the tensions between disappearance and persistence, industry and territory, reality and reconstruction. Smell becomes a vehicle for storytelling, transmission and shared fiction.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Lidia Molina González
It all started with taking a break. A pause. A moment alone in a shared space: quiet, ordinary, a little strange. Toilets might not be the first place you’d look for big ideas, but that’s why we chose them. Toilet Break uses this overlooked space to explore how we live together, take space, and connect. This first issue is about in-betweens: between public and private, inside and outside. It gathers voices from Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, across generations and practices. A place where ideas circulate freely, where serious things can be said with a wink. A collective and personal space to test new editorial forms, listen more carefully, and believe in detours as a way forward. To take, quite literally, a moment to reflect and sit with things.
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS
A dozen personalities with links to the ECAL - graduates, professors or lecturers - were honoured at the "Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2024" awards
PARTNERSHIP
HOMEWORKS: a limited collection designed by ECAL's Bachelor of Industrial Design programme for the swiss brand micasa
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS
Argentinian filmmaker and artist Jazmín López is an ECAL resident at La Becque during the fall semester.
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS
The graduation ceremony held on 27 June 2025 was also an opportunity to highlight many diploma projects through the awarding of Grants and Prizes. Congratulations to all the graduates and award winners!
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS
Sara de Brito Faustino and Aline Savioz, respectively a graduate and student of the Bachelor's programme in Photography at ECAL, are among the winners of the 2025 edition of the prestigious Dior Prize for Photography and Visual Arts for Young Talents.
PARTNERSHIP
To celebrate the collaboration between the three branches of government, the Vaud Parliament is unveiling its very first vintage wine – adorned with a label designed by ECAL.
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS
Following the nomination of 28 of its graduates as finalists for the Swiss Design Awards 2025, ECAL is proud to announce that 13 have been awarded this prestigious distinction by the Federal Office of Culture. This strong representation once again demonstrates the quality and diversity of the talent trained at the university
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS
The animated short film Qui part à la chasse by ECAL graduate Léa Favre has been selected for the official competition at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS
Congratulations to artist Lucas Erin, ECAL graduate, who has been awarded the 2025 Manor Cultural Prize for the canton of Vaud. The jury was impressed by his approach, both precise and poetic.
Learn more about projects and activities
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