Romain Simon CollaudRomain is an Art Director living in Fribourg, Switzerland. In 2013, he received a BA in visual communication from ECAL & in 2017, earned a MAS in design research for digital innovation from the EPFL ECAL Lab.He believes that design should be intuitive & revolve around the user. To strengthen this, he learned inclusive design methodologies at the RCA & honed his skills in icon design at the University of Bournemouth. For the latter, he manipulated icons’ aesthetics to evaluate their effect on perceived usability. Many of his projects deal with notions of big data, data visualization & search algorithms. These play a large role in his research work, where he explores navigation principles & aggregation of content in mass information environments. Currently, he is working on a major social network system for elderly people, as well as a digital exhibition whose narrative navigation as well as interactions with literary artifacts create a unique relationship with visitors.Romain is methodical, logical, detail-oriented & a bit of a perfectionist. For his BA thesis, he explored the omnipresence of the grid in daily visual landscapes. After that, he worked as a graphic designer at ECAL for its communication as well as a freelancer for other organisations. He also co-founded a workshop that specializes in graphic design for unique mediums as well as a design collective for conceptual ideas. Today, he works at EPFL ECAL Lab – the EPFL design research center – where he confronts his point of view with engineers & psychologists.
Harry GuggerHarry Gugger started his professional career as a toolmakers apprentice from 1973 to 1977. From 1984 to 1989 he studied architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) with Flora Ruchat and at Columbia University, New York with Tadao Ando. He received his degree in architecture at ETH Zurich in 1990. In the same year he began his collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron (HdeM) when he was their assistant at the summer school in Karlsruhe. From 1991 to 2009 he was a partner of the firm. During his partnership Harry Gugger was, among many other projects, in charge of Tate Modern in London (1995-2000); the Headquaters for Prada USA in New York (2000-2002) and the Schaulager Basel for the Laurenz Foundation (1998-2003). His last projects at HdeM included CaixaForum, Madrid (20012008), Tate Modern Extension, London (2004- ) and KMOMA, The Kolkata Museum of Modern Art, Kolkata (2008- ). The Laban Dance Centre in London (1998-2003) was awarded the RIBA Stirling Prize 2003. In 2004 Harry Gugger received the Swiss Art Award Prix Meret Oppenheim.
His academic career started as visiting professor at the Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen in Weimar in 1994. From 2000-2006 he was an External Examiner at the AA School of Architecture in London. In 2001 he was a visiting professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). 2005 Harry Gugger became full professor for architectural design at the EPFL, where he founded the Laboratory for Architectural Production (lapa). His laboratory was in charge of the National Participation of Bahrain Reclaim at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 winning the Golden Lion award. In 2011 Harry Gugger transformed his laboratory into Laboratoire Bâle (laba) a satellite laboratory of the EPFL situated in Basel and dedicated to urban and architectural design.
From 1999-2007 Harry Gugger was a member of the cityscape commission in Basel and was on the board of trustees of the Swiss Architecture Museum from 2004-2007. 2010 he became a member of the board of trustees of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction. The same year he founded his new practice Harry Gugger Studio.
Miguel Fernández RuizNé en Espagne en 1977, Miguel Fernández Ruiz obtient son diplôme en ingénierie civile par l'université polytechnique de Madrid (Espagne) en 2001, où il reçoit le prix national au meilleur étudiant en ingénierie civile. Il poursuit ensuite ses études de doctorat dans la même université, obtenant le titre de docteur (cum laude) en 2003. Pendant les études de doctorat, il travaille à temps partiel (75%) en tant qu'ingénieur conseil spécialisé dans les structures mixtes.
En 2004, il rejoint l'équipe du Prof. Muttoni à l'EPFL en tant que post-doc, obtenant ensuite une promotion en tant que collaborateur scientifique et chargé de cours. En 2014, il est nommé Maître d'Enseignement et Recheche à l'EPFL. Actuellement, il travaille à l'EPFL à temps partiel (70%) et développe en parallèle une carrière professionnelle dans le domaine de l'ingénierie de structures.
Alain WegmannAlain Wegmann joined EPFL in 1996. His interests are in techniques to better align business and IT. He developed, with his group and partners, the SEAM methods: SEAM for business (strategic thinking), SEAM for enterprise architecture (business/IT alignment) and SEAM for software (IT). The originality of SEAM is in the integration of generic systems thinking principles into discipline-specific methods. This integration has three benefits: (1) the possibility to relate the different disciplines (by having common systemic principles); (2) the capability to leverage on discipline-specific knowledge (by using the vocabulary and the heuristics of each discipline) and (3) to be more efficient in solving problems (by benefiting from the problem solving techniques developed in systems thinking). SEAM is currently applied in master courses and consulting. Consulting is done for start-ups developing their business and technology strategies and for large companies having service-oriented architecture projects.
Prior to joining EPFL, Alain Wegmann worked for 14 years with Logitech in software development/engineering management (Switzerland, Taiwan, US), manufacturing (Taiwan) and marketing (US). When he left Logitech, Alain Wegmann was engineering vice-president and marketing director for large accounts.
