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PHOTOGRAPHY

Dramatic portraiture

with Louie Banks

Returning to the basics and origins of photography will allow students to focus their energy and ideas meaningfully on their concept and subject.   Louie Banks provided them with three keywords to consider as a way to create photographs with more impact than what is typically expected from today’s editorials and campaigns. The students were free to draw inspiration from one of the following keywords or to try incorporating a bit of each into their project: "Movement," "Costume," "Emotion."

PHOTOGRAPHY

Dramatic portraiture

with Chaumont–Zaerpour

Each group must create a series of fashion images by appropriating and/or subverting codes related to existing images. All the series will then be compiled like in a magazine, in a bound and printed format.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Digital Impact

with Nicole Ruggiero

Guided by New-York based 3D arist Nicole Ruggiero, the first year students brought their most impactful digital memories to life. Using Cinema4D, ZBrush, and Substance Painter, they crafted animations exploring how technology has shaped our experiences through nostalgic tributes.

PRODUCT DESIGN

ReGrid

with Thélonious Goupil

During this one-week workshop led by Thélonious Goupil, edits were made to a ‘drop false ceiling’ in Bar Gala Lausanne. By hacking the system, playing with existing elements such as lighting or ventilators, the outdate ceiling was given new life without the need for full renovation.

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

ECAL X KVADRAT - SUIT UP

with Stephane Halmai-Voisard

For this project, the students had to design a seat, or rather requalify and rehabilitate a chair or armchair using existing models such as the monobloc, aluminium bistro chair, or deck chair, as the base structure. Employing Kvadrat upholstery textiles, the designs had to be reversible, meaning it should not alter the existing structure. While the original function of the chair could be maintained or altered, the proposals aimed to improved the comfort and aesthetic character of the seats.

Richard Authier. Design and industry in Northern Vaud

with Calypso Mahieu Laurent Soldini, Sophie Wietlisbach

The project aims to shed light on the career of Richard Authier (Lausanne, 1925–2018), who was an industrial designer at Hermes Paillard International in Yverdon-les-Bains and a pioneer of industrial design in French-speaking Switzerland.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

GTE: Renens City Stories

with Jack McVeigh

A one week workshop where the first-year students were taught the basics of Blender and how to achieve a similar visual language to that of early era video game graphics. Students were asked to create a looping animation or 'Story' from the perspective of a character in the city of Renens where ECAL is based. These were then packaged into a playable game displayed on a series of CRT monitors controlled using a PS1 controller. The game itself was completely run in Blender using Geometry Nodes & Python.

PHOTOGRAPHY

BURNING CORSO - Thomas Mailaender

with Thomas Mailaender

In the spring of 2024, Thomas Mailaender and the students of the ECAL Bachelor in Photography entered the ruins of the club with the intention of making it resonate once again. Between archaeology, documentary research, and imaginative speculations, the group of adventurers crafted a surprising exhibition path blending mold and glitter, ashes and glamour. For one night, the Corso was filled with explosive sounds and images in a fiery tribute to the nights of Renens.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Pratique photographique

with Maxime Guyon

"Extraordinary Daily Commodities": Everyday Objects What if the objects around us were not mere tools, but autonomous entities with their own essence? Inspired by Graham Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), this semester invited students to explore objects from a fresh perspective. Freed from the shadow of our consciousness, they take a place equal to that of humans, animals, and plants. Guided by Maxime Guyon, second-year photography students were encouraged to rediscover what "banal" truly means and dive into a reflection on the place and sensitivity of objects in the contemporary world.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Picture Consequences

with Tamara Janes

The students task is to create their own story, storyline, narrative or sequences based on the existing given images. Using their personal interests, imagination and ideas they link the images together. They can continue the plot of the images, do in-depth research, write fictional stories or tell stories based on personal experiences. The students had the freedom to photograph, generate or film.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Workshop with Lorenzo Vitturi

with Lorenzo Vitturi

The aim of this workshop is to engage students in a multidisciplinary process that combines photography with sculpture and scenography. To emphasize the importance of the creative process, students are encouraged to use primarily collected and recycled materials, which will need to be transformed and integrated into their visual narrative. The work presented at the end of the workshop will reflect this approach, combining visual results with sculptures and ephemeral installations.

PHOTOGRAPHY

ECAL x AREA OF WORK - CO-EXISTENCE

with Area Of Work, Milo Keller

ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne has teamed up with Paris-based studio Area of Work at Paris Photo to present CO-EXISTENCE, a monumental immersive installation in the heart of Paris’s 11th arrondissement, from 7 to 9 November 2024. In a large metropolis, a small, seemingly empty apartment reveals discreet traces of human presence. On another scale, a conquering population manifests itself. Wings flap, slime trails, antennae shivers... In the industrial setting of the former Garage République in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, CO-EXISTENCE showcases a living cohabitation through a sequence of artificial images created using Computer Generated Imagery (CGI). These spectacular yet intimate photo-realistic projections highlight the imperceptible, the infra- thin, and the invisible, blurring the scales between micro and macro. Developed during three series of workshops conducted from 2023 to autumn 2024 by Area of Work, CO- EXISTENCE bears witness to the technical and artistic skills that are honed within the ECAL MA Photography. These workshops enabled students to transpose their photographic skills into the virtual space of 3D graphics to understand the temporal, artistic, and commercial issues involved in creating CGI. ‘This collaboration offered ECAL students an introduction to the tools and possibilities of 3D graphics, exploring their integration into the processes of creating photorealistic and hyper-realistic images, while highlighting the importance of the artistic and cinematographic dimensions that are at the heart of our identity.’ – Amine Ghorab & Scott Renau, Area of Work, Paris. Founded in Paris in 2018 by artists and directors Amine Ghorab and Scott Renau, Area of Work is known for its distinctive contemporary visual narratives, blending graphic framing and rigorous photographic direction. Specialising in fashion, luxury, and technology, the creative studio has become a major player in contemporary visual storytelling..

PHOTOGRAPHY

ECAL × JEAN PAUL GAULTIER: SPORT - CORPS

with Florence Tétier, Nicolas Coulomb

SPORT - CORPS : Jeux Olympiques et Paralympiques The project is based on the theme of the body, with a view to staging physical effort.  The recent context of the Olympic and Paralympic Games logically frames the choice of sport as an aesthetic means of highlighting different forms of bodily expression. The choice of discipline could be classic, out-of-games or even imaginary. The students worked around a certain vision of physical effort, movement, constraint, a form of discipline, or even joy.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Fine Art Photography

with Laurence Bonvin

Liquid Times Produce a project using photography and video on the theme of fluidity, liquid form and water.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Fine Art Photography

with Natacha Lesueur

Documentary, the power of make-believe. Based on projects developed around a common theme, the students develop a personal, in-depth project around the theme of pretense. They build a project that plays with the limits of veracity in photography, using it as an artifice of deception.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Workshop Digital Medium Format

with Anoush Abrar

Beauty shot The week-long Medium format digital workshop is both an introduction to shooting equipment and dedicated software. Students worked in groups to produce portrait images.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Applied Photography

with Calypso Mahieu

Waliking in Renens A collaborative project in which students were asked to choose a local shop in Renens and to create a documentary project combining images of still life, architecture and portraits.

FILM STUDIES

Paleo Workshop - Screening at Visions du Réel 2024

by Loris Ciaburri, Jonathan Daza Ospina, Loïs de Goumoëns, Sara Dutch, Fei Fan, Pablo Guscetti, Anna Joos, Saleh Kashefi, Theofanis Papadopoulos, Valentina Parati, Antoine Scalese

Students in the Master Film Studies ECAL/HEAD produced documentary vignettes for the Paléo Festival, which were shown for the first time at Visions du Réel in April 2024.

PRODUCT DESIGN

SORTIR DU CADRE – ECAL + DECATHLON

with Camille Blin

On the occasion of Paris Design Week 2024, DECATHLON is partnering with ECAL's Product Design Master's programme to unveil "Sortir du Cadre", an installation showcasing two prototypes of electric-assisted trekking bikes based on research into eco-design. Through this collaboration, DECATHLON engages the younger generation of designers around eco-design themes. These concept bikes, envisioned by students from Product Design Master’s  programme, express a vision of the future in which sustainable development and the pleasure of outdoor activities go hand in hand.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Julie Turin – Star's Bags - The Tree Bag

by Julie Turin

Assembly line work and online orders have become the norm, even in craftsmanship. The Star's Bags app is a seamstress's response to this trend, offering an immersive shopping experience to highlight manual labor before the customer receives their bag. "The Tree Bag" is the first collection from this app, which can expand into other themes. Through this experience, the customer participates in every step of the bag's creation over several days: gathering materials, placing patterns, cutting, sewing, pinning, addressing, and shipping. By following this process, the customer appreciates the effort involved and retains a special memory of their purchase, enhancing the value of the product received.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Viktor Gagné – Serialized Saplings

by Viktor Gagné

The weight of materials produced by humans is now believed to exceed that of all terrestrial biomass. How will these artifacts integrate into the rest of the environment in a million years? Serialized Saplings is an interactive installation that speculates on a potential form of vegetation to come, heavily altered by the excesses of human production, here crystallized through the symbol of the electrical outlet. By manipulating the connections of several power strips, the participant is invited to program the "genetic code" of hybrid plant species that do not yet exist and whose appearance resembles our industrial standards. This generated vegetation is then classified in the form of a digital herbarium that can be consulted and studied.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Charlotte Pralong – Take Part

by Charlotte Pralong

Have you ever wanted to be part of the show at the concert you are attending? This is where the Take Part project comes in, an interactive scenography for a song specially composed by my musical duo with my sister. The phone, often seen as a disturbing intermediary between artists and the audience, is here used as a tool for connection that strengthens bonds and amplifies collective energy. Indeed, each spectator participates in the projection behind the musicians using their phone. The audience follows a character with a naïve style, animated in 2D, who travels through various worlds to recharge before finally sharing this energy, symbolizing the sharing and multiplication of collective joy.

TYPE DESIGN

Antoine Pasi – Quasi

by Antoine Pasi

The Quasi family started with the idea of “Mécalde”, a french typographic term employed by Maximilien Vox to describe José Mendoza y Almeida’s way of mixing Mechanistic and Garalde genres. Like a soft sculpture molded by hand, Quasi offers a contemporary dive into an empiric and hybrid process by joining traces from the craft and the industrial, gathering fragments from different periods. The brush, the chisel and the broad nib pen are joining on a rigid and boxy construction, without rejecting the digital tool. Quasi embraces the beauty of imperfections and finds its interest in inconsistent and grotesque details, mediating antagonistic ideas. Like a Janus-faced performer, Quasi is confident yet clumsy – rough yet elegant, inhabiting polarizing personalities within a character set.

TYPE DESIGN

Maximilian Inzinger – Embajador

by Maximilian Inzinger

Embajador is an all-purpose serif font family designed for extended reading. Referencing historical Spanish influences that show an unfamiliar dynamic in their strokes, Embajador strives to harmonize contemporary type setting while maintaining the essence of the Spanish spirit and charm. Available from Light to Black with corresponding italics, Embajador’s weights are drawn as optical sizes. Whereas the Light is monolinear with wider proportions, the Black features more condensed, high-contrasted letterforms. These variations in weight are intended to guide users in choosing the appropriate style for their specific application and size. With the addition of optical spacing, however, all styles can also be used effectively at any size.

TYPE DESIGN

Thorgeir Kristinn Blöndal – Flaneri

by Thorgeir Kristinn Blöndal

Flaneri is a cursive script-like typeface that invites references born after industrialization to find its place. Torn between the human stroke and its translation into the machine, it steps into a world where authenticity is becoming harder to detect, and a longing for “human made” becomes greater. While wandering around many places, Flaneri finds inspiration in everything from Jan van de Velde’s art of writing to my grandmother’s and my own handwriting, the digital translation carries questions on what is to be left out, polished or even highlighted. Resulting in a cursive font with a physical texture and broken connections, leaving the observer with a feeling of what has been or what is to come.

TYPE DESIGN

Nell May – Night Editor

by Nell May

Night Editor is a text font family designed for the dark screen writing environment: a focused space for creation and thinking. Night Editor features a calm low contrast calligraphic skeleton. Large counters, open apertures and generous spacing all aid legibility and counter the impact of light halation. Styles are limited to necessary tools: Regular, Bold, Italics (plus accompanying light mode grades). Night Editor Mono is the text production workhorse with oversized punctuation. It is designed for a slower, more physical access to a text in progress and is also available in Round with softened terminals that embrace the bloom of light. Night Editor Sans is the proportional counterpart, suitable for both writing and reading texts in the tranquil darkness.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Yichen Wu – Haitang

by Yichen Wu

Haitang Stool is the result of a culture-based form study, a blend of tradition and democratic ubiquity. The popularity of the New Chinese Style demonstrates a growing recognition of traditional culture in the Chinese market. Building on extensive research into Ming-style furniture, this project aims to extract and bring its beauty to everyday objects, challenging the common perception that it only serves a select few. By redesigning the iconic red plastic stool, the local Monobloc alternative, Haitang Stool explores the communicative power of cultural forms while keeping its low cost and universal functionality.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Antonio Severi – VAC (Vacuum Assembled Composites)

by Antonio Severi

VAC focuses on assembling objects without conventional fasteners, using vacuum as a binder. This technique, known as «jamming,» originates from soft robotics but also occurs when vacuum-sealing goods like coffee. It increases friction between parts like glue but allows the process to be reversible. Various bags were filled with different materials, creating unique seating options that address technical challenges and explore material combinations. The project produced five chair prototypes using different methods, showcasing binding techniques that allow for easy separation and recycling, highlighting a commitment to sustainability and innovation.