Capitale | EPFL Graph Search

thumb|upright=1.5|En rouge, les pays dont la capitale n'est pas la plus grande ville. thumb|upright=1.5| Une capitale (du latin caput, capitis, tête) est une ville où siègent les pouvoirs, ou, par extension, une ville ayant une prééminence dans un domaine particulier (social, culturel, économique, sportif, religieux, touristique...). Dans ce dernier cas, on parlera plus volontiers de « métropole ». Types de capitales
En tant que tel, le terme « capitale » désigne très souvent la capitale d'un État, c'est-à-dire la ville où siègent généralement les pouvoirs nationaux. Cependant, dans certains pays, la capitale constitutionnelle (qui peut également être appelée la capitale « officielle » ou capitale « de droit ») n’est pas le siège des institutions. En effet, prenons comme exemple la Constitution néerlandaise qui, en tant que loi fondamentale des Pays-Bas, donne officiellement le statut de capitale à la ville d'Amsterdam, alors que la quasi-totalité des institutions nat

L'oeuvre de Leandro V. Locsin (1928-1994), architecte à la recherche de l'identité élusive de l'architecture philippine du second après-guerre

Jean-Claude Girard

Filipino architect Leandro Valencia Locsin (Silay1928 - Makati 1994) produced an architectural work that involved 250 projects, of which at least more than half were completed and mostly in his country of origin. A graduate in architecture of San Tomas de Manila University in 1953, his career began after the Second World War, which left the capital city all but destroyed following airstrikes by the allies that served to liberate the Philippines from the Japanese occupying forces. Following his studies, Locsin is immediately solicited with requests which leads him to open his office and give up the idea of completing his graduate studies in one of the prestigious American universities, which at the time had welcomed great masters who had sought exile from Europe to the United States in the 1930s. For a member of a privileged social class, this atypical career path makes Locsin a singular figure in the architectural landscape as he will immediately focus his interest on questioning the specificity of Filipino architecture. In a 1989 interview, Locsin confirms his career-long interest in researching the boundaries between local culture and international influences. The study of the vernacular tradition in his country will orient his work towards defining certain architectural principles to allow for the emergence of a new contemporary Filipino architecture. The post-war period, involving innovations in technical resources and favorable political and economic conditions for urban development, will serve to render all the more complex a body of work that is difficult to apprehend and qualify. In a 1964 text, Locsin refers to the elusive identity of the Filipino architectural spirit which, according to him, is the result of an assimilation of various external influences, given the geographic positioning of the Philippines and its colonial past. His work never ceased to reflect this quest for identity in built representations. While Leandro V. Locsin has been called "the poet of space" for the quality of his projects characterized by a great attention given to the sense of space, abstraction, symmetry, proportion, and materiality linked to the use of concrete and traditional materials his work has never been the subject of a complete study. Few scientific contributions exist and remain partial, in that they focus on certain specificities of his production. Further, there are no studies that offer a complete review of his office archives, a necessary step towards uncovering and highlighting the unique characteristics of a multiform production. The objective of this dissertation is to provide a complete overview of the work of Leandro V. Locsin, notably through a survey of his projects, and an analysis of the condition of their production in a local and international context, in order to render explicit the specific qualities that make this work a unique example of architecture of the period and from the Philippines.

EPFL2018

Financing Biomedical Ventures - Myths and Realities

Jeffrey Scott Behrens

Angel funding is an important source of capital for startup ventures (J. Sohl 2019), providing a similar level of capital as institutional venture capital (OECD 2011). But angel funding is challenging to study due to the informal nature of the activity. A common paradigm for new venture funding argues that new ventures initially fund their activities with angel investment and then, as they show success, make progress to commercialization and de-risk core venture propositions, ventures transition to more professional institutional (venture capital) funding. A belief in this paradigm can strongly influence early venture creation activities, and assumptions about the later availability of capital from institutional venture capital underpin many startup business plans. However, the literature exploring this phenomenon is very sparse, and the question of the relationship of angel to venture funding transition has rarely been studied. By analyzing a large and robust dataset, this thesis advances the understanding of the actual behavior of investors and the impact this early behavior, and the funding choices involved, have on company outcomes. This thesis also explores a novel form of venture investing and places it into a broader context of new venture funding that may help explain some of the key observations discussed. These fundamentally empirical studies examine the nature/reality of important entrepreneurial phenomena of interactions between angel and venture funding in novel ways, pose questions, and identify a set results that point to a potential market failure. Attempts are made to understand these results and place them into the contexts of both research theory and a broader understanding of entrepreneurial behavior; there certainly remain a set of unanswered questions and potential fruitful directions for future research.

EPFL2020

L'espace public à Bogotá

Yafiza Zorro Maldonado

There is a link between phenomena covered by the umbrella term «urban mobility» and the wealth of social and spatial dynamics active in de-structuring the city as a coherent spatial model, a process known as «urban fragmentation». It is therefore reasonable to hypothesise that the combination of urban mobility and urban fragmentation has a decisive impact on the formal and spatial evolution of contemporary cities. In order to investigate the spatial changes underway, we have selected public space as a study area. As a result of intense research interest over the past 20 to 30 years throughout the world, public spaces are now considered to be the most important areas for the creation of the city, be it spatially or socially. The evolution of the concept of public space has been considerable. Most researchers today agree that it is not simply a set of pavements, parks and town squares: social dynamics also form an integral part of public space. This is why it is important to understand public space as an essential component of the city, which is able to constantly adapt its shape or size. These changes can induce spatial fragmentation which in turn causes social segregation in the city (power inequalities, access inequities, etc.). The interest of our research lies therefore in the analysis of the relationships between urban fragmentation and urban mobility, from the vantage point of public space. In order to give a practical grounding to our work, we analysed several public spaces, with a view to understanding the processes leading to the creation and development of public space. This research was carried out in Bogotà, the capital city of Colombia, because the great cities of Latin America are confronted - perhaps more than other cities elsewhere - to a rapid socio-spatial fragmentation process. In view of this risk, some cities have undertaken major urban restructuring campaigns with almost military undertones, within which public spaces are viewed as prize assets. This is the case of Bogotà, a prime location for observing both urban fragmentation and creative reactions against it: spatially through the study of public spaces, and socially through the analysis of public and private mobility practices.