ABSTRACT
This paper reflects on the pedagogy used for a series of student workshops on building with reused materials at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and presents the results of its 7th edition, which focused on floor systems. During these workshops, a learning-by-doing approach encourages collaboration in complex design tasks among architecture, civil engineering, and environmental sciences students. Addressing conventional floor systems’ high embodied carbon footprint, the 7th edition invited interdisciplinary student teams to develop and build an office-building flooring system made with non-conventional materials, i.e., reused components, bio-based and geo-based materials. The four student teams completed a pre-existing load-bearing floor system made of reused concrete and steel elements with all the missing non-load-bearing flooring and ceiling layers to meet technical and comfort requirements. As a result of a 5-day hands-on workshop, original flooring and ceiling systems were designed and built by each of the four teams. The paper describes each system and discusses the pedagogical outputs of the workshop.
