Project I: Atelier Aebi-OI

This studio focuses on designing a real university campus of Applied Sciences for Smiling Gecko, located in Kampong Chhnang Province, Cambodia. Students will work across all design scales, addressing real constraints of site, material, and climate. Story, material, and place form the foundation of the design approach. Architecture is understood as an experience shaped by construction, atmosphere, and cultural narrative. Smiling Gecko’s core pillars — education, agriculture & livestock, craftsmanship & production, and hospitality — serve as thematic anchors throughout the semester. The process is rooted in making, sensibility, and contextual precision, with the aim of developing proposals that are not only visionary, but truly buildable.

Develop buildable architectural solutions across multiple scales — from construction detail to territorial strategy — for a university campus of Applied Sciences in rural Cambodia. The course explores how architecture can support sustainable systems and vocational training through context-driven, material-conscious, and purposeful design.

In presence

- Weekly studio sessions (Thursday & Friday)
- Site research, feasibility studies, and territorial planning
- Seminar week with visits to relevant institutions in Switzerland
- Workshops focused on material, scale, and hands-on experimentation
- Guest lectures on structure, sustainable food systems, and vernacular architecture
- Remote collaboration with local partners in Cambodia
- Intermediate and final critiques

Intermediate and final critiques