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Guided by EPFL + ECAL Lab, participants explored how AI technologies can be integrated into product design to enhance functionality and enrich the user experience. Over the week-long workshop, BA students engaged with the theoretical foundations of AI while experimenting with practical applications across multiple use cases.

Led by Delphine Ribes Lemay, Béatrice Marie Durandard, and Luis Carlos Rodriguez Aguayo, the workshop encouraged speculative thinking, hands-on experimentation, and reflection on how AI reshapes creative practice, enabling designers to leverage these tools throughout the design process.

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Video by ECAL / Marvin Merkel

Utilizing state-of-the-art AI tools for text-to-image generation, each group designed and constructed a stool, drawing inspiration from different thematic starting points. Students not only learned to employ the different AI tools but also gained a solid theoretical understanding of the technology’s technical foundations and its practical applications in parallel to the creative process.

Physical results of the workshop – Images by EPFL + ECAL Lab

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Titled TECHNO WORKSHOPS, a series of workshops explored the creative potential of different technologies in the context of industrial design. Students were able to discover Additive Manufacturing with Rapid Liquid Print, Artificial Intelligence with the EPFL+ECAL Lab, and 3D Scanning with Michel Charlot and the Technopôle Sainte-Croix. These workshops gave them the opportunity to experiment with and reflect on the potential of such technologies, and to envision how they can be integrated into the design process — from early ideation and exploration to the tangible realization of objects and concepts.

TECHNO WORKSHOPS - Video by ECAL / Marvin Merkel

FIND THE OTHER WORKSHOPS HERE:

SHOE REFORM

Project

The Shoe Reform workshop, led by designer Michel Charlot and Siddhartha Berns, representative of AddiPole — a hub for reverse engineering and additive manufacturing — brought students together for an innovative exploration of 3D scanning technologies, in collaboration with Technopôle Sainte-Croix.

RAPID LIQUID PRINT

Project

A short and engaging workshop held in collaboration with Rapid Liquid Print, a Boston-based startup and spinoff of the MIT Self-Assembly Lab, explored the fundamentals of Embedded 3D Printing by questioning, in both technical and poetic terms, what defines a curve, a surface, or a thickened volume as it transitions from the digital to the physical world.