Call for applications: join the winter school’s teaching team

Du 01.02.2027
au 05.02.2027
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winter school
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Every year, the school organises a week-long Winter School bringing together more than 400 French and international students to tackle a shared challenge, with the aim of experimenting with new teaching methods and working collectively on the city, the region and architecture.

For the 2027 edition, the school has entrusted the curatorship to Marion Lacas and Jacques Ippoliti, architects and urban planners from the Vis-à-vis practice and lecturers at the school. They have chosen ‘Time Capsule’ as the theme.

A key feature of the 2027 Winter School will be the production of contributions to the forthcoming Potswar Triennial of the City and Territories. The work produced during the week in February will be exhibited on campus in the autumn.

Find out more about the Postwar Triennale

The first edition of the Potswar Triennale of Cities and Territories is dedicated to the post-war legacy. Ten controversial themes – replicability, lightness, planning, metropolisation, the cult of the machine, shared infrastructure, mobility, comfort, sectorisation, the welfare state – are proposed to fuel a shared debate: does this rich and complex legacy constitute a collective mistake to be overcome, or a resource to be reinterpreted?

The Triennial will be held in autumn 2027 on the campuses of Gustave Eiffel University and at several partner cultural institutions (the Centre Pompidou (off-site), the Château de Champs-sur-Marne, the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, the Ferme du Buisson (Noisiel), the Magasins Généraux (Pantin), the Maison pour tous Victor Jara (Champs-sur-Marne), etc... [non-exhaustive list]

find out more about the ten controversies

Replicability The idea of an optimised solution that can be effectively replicated in different contexts and areas vs a specific response tailored to the location and users.
Lightness The economical use of materials and a lightweight, efficient design vs a less technical and energy-intensive approach that may be heavier and more massive.
Planning A centralised, rational and efficient organisational tool vs a shift in focus towards more flexible and local initiatives.
Metropolisation The strengthening of metropolitan dynamics and the associated benefits of concentration and the pooling of services vs the idea of urban exodus and territorial rebalancing.
The cult of the machine The fetishisation of machines and technology as a source of progress versus the simplification of machines and the regulation of their use to restore human connections and conserve resources.
Shared infrastructure The expansion of networks and their complexity to equip and modernise the entire territory versus questioning new infrastructure projects, their possible alternatives and the material legacy of such projects.
Mobility Increasing access to mobility at both local and international levels vs advocating a form of localism to promote local relationships and services.
Comfort Improving the quality of life and control over comfort versus frugality and limiting excess.
Sectorisation Zoning to limit complex interdependencies and nuisances, and clustering to create centres of excellence and efficiency versus a mixed-use, consensual city, reintroducing a diversity of uses and a more continuous use of space.
Welfare State A strong, interventionist welfare state versus the liberalisation and privatisation of services.

Time Capsule

The theme Time Capsule: Postwar in a bottle, conceived by Lacas and Ippoliti for the Winter School, invites us to examine the mythological dimension of controversies through an object that is as familiar as it is strange: the time capsule.

Before becoming controversial, these ideas were taken for granted. They carried the promise of reconstruction, progress and modernity. The motorway embodied freedom, the grand ensemble social progress, the machine emancipation, and concrete the future. These narratives have gradually acquired the status of myths, in the sense intended by Roland Barthes: cultural constructs that have become second nature, political choices transformed into necessities, stories that have ultimately made us forget that they were fabricated. How can we engage with and play upon these myths, laying them bare to take a stand and question the imaginaries they embody?

The time capsule selects what is worth passing on, constructs a narrative of the present and addresses it to a future that is as yet unknown. Behind its apparent neutrality, it reveals a way of seeing the world, of prioritising knowledge, of selecting memories and of imagining the future. First appearing in its modern form in the 1930s and widely adopted during the ‘thirty glorious years’, the time capsule has become a symbol of the post-war era, sealed within the foundations of buildings or sent into space. The capsule thus becomes a tool for inquiry and project development: how might one archive a controversy? To whom is this transmission addressed? What form should it take today? Which narratives does it bring to light, and which does it continue to erase?

Each proposal must therefore address one of the ten controversies, giving it substance within a time capsule conceived in an open-ended form: an object, installation, performance, map, protocol or architectural installation.

Four areas for reflection (optional) are proposed to facilitators to guide the design of their workshops:

• Archiving: choosing what matters
• Containing: designing the container
• Addressing: for what future?
• Decoding: the time capsule as a protocol for interpretation

find out more about the areas for reflection

(1) Archiving: choosing what matters
Every time capsule begins with an act of selection. Which objects, practices or narratives deserve to be preserved? This theme invites us to question the logic behind inventory-taking and to develop alternative or dissident archiving protocols. It explores the implicit hierarchies of memory and the narratives that have shaped (including through omission) our collective heritage.

(2) Containing: designing the container
The time capsule must take on a form. How can fragile materials be protected in the long term? How might we conceive of a container whose very form is the message? Burying, sealing, placing at height, floating: each way of situating the capsule within space establishes a different relationship with the territory, with memory and with time. This theme invites a constructive and material exploration, but also a symbolic one.

(3) Addressing: for what future?
Every time capsule imagines a recipient and a timeframe. Ten years, fifty years, several centuries? An individual, a community, an unknown civilisation? Constructing this address reveals, by implication, our own vision of the future – and our way of inhabiting the present. It invites us to grapple with the question of rupture: designing for a future that will not resemble us, that may perhaps not understand us.

(4) Decoding: the time capsule as a protocol for interpretation
Does a time capsule whose contents are illegible still have any meaning? How can we pass on not only objects but also the keys to understanding them, across cultural and temporal divides? We will reflect on the languages of transmission and explore, by implication, what cannot be transmitted, what is inevitably lost, and what the future will reinterpret in spite of us.

Call for applications from supervisors

The Winter School is a celebratory opportunity for experimentation. It offers the chance to explore unusual formats, combine disciplines, test hypotheses and invent objects that one would not normally create within an academic setting. Projects must be feasible within five days, presented on the afternoon of Friday 5 February to all the school’s communities and partners, and suitable for exhibition in the autumn as part of the Triennial.

Procedure

Eligibility
This call for applications is open to teaching staff and alumni, as well as to all architects, designers, scenographers, artists, graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, researchers, journalists, visual artists, textile designers, thinkers, etc.

Deadline
The deadline for submitting a workshop proposal is Monday 28 September 2026.

Procedure
Applications must be submitted exclusively via démarches simplifiées

Team
The supervising team may consist of between 1 and 3 people maximum.
Supervision ratio: 15 to 18 students per supervisor.
Each team must appoint a representative responsible for submitting the required information before, during and after the Winter School.

How it works
Each team must briefly describe the type of work produced, the presentation formats, the exhibition principles, the venues to be used during the week and the equipment required, as well as any potential partners or sponsors that could be involved.

Timetable

Deadline for applications
Monday 28 September 2026 at midnight

Announcement of successful applicants
Thursday 20 October 2026

Coordination meeting with the winners
Friday 3 November at 1.30 pm (hybrid)

Winter School
Monday 1 to Friday 5 February 2025

Deadline for submission of images and text
Friday 19 February 2027

Budget

Each workshop has a budget based on the number of students in the group, up to a maximum of €85 per student. This budget covers the purchase of materials, printing costs, speakers’ fees, and visits (travel expenses, etc.).

Orders for equipment and supplies must only be placed after approval by the School’s finance department and with the School’s approved suppliers.

Ensa Paris-Est takes a proactive approach to sustainable development and social responsibility. Supervisors are encouraged to incorporate these considerations into their purchasing decisions and to ensure the recycling of waste generated by the workshop.

Download ici the guidelines and list of suppliers

Travel, accommodation and meal expenses are not covered – including for speakers who do not usually reside in the Paris region.

Remuneration

Contract-based teaching staff
The supervision workload for the week amounts to 20 hours, paid at a gross hourly rate of 41.41 euros for staff from outside the school.

Tenured and associate staff
These hours are not paid as additional remuneration but are included within teaching duties.

Payment is arranged via a letter of engagement. Payment is made once the service has been satisfactorily completed, i.e. once the workshop has been supervised during the Winter School and all requested text and image materials have been submitted.

Travel and meal expenses are not covered.

Further information

Participants
The students from the school taking part are those on Bachelor’s (L1, L2, L3) and Master’s (M1) programmes, totalling around 400 students.

The Winter School is open to French and international participants from other institutions upon registration (90 euros per person).

Safety rules
The proposed projects must not involve: working at height, open flames or food preparation.

Dismantling and recycling at the end of the Winter School
Once the jury has finished, each supervisor is responsible for dismantling the installations and sorting the materials used for recycling, in accordance with the instructors’ instructions.

Exhibition during the Triennale
The works produced during the week in February must be available for re-exhibition on campus in the autumn as part of the Postwar Triennale.

Communication
The name of our institution is Ensa Paris-Est. The guest speaker undertakes to use this full name to refer to the school in all communications and to tag @ensaparisest in their Instagram and LinkedIn posts.

Curators

Marion Lacas and Jacques Ippoliti are architects and urban planners who graduated from ENSA Paris-Malaquais and are co-founders of the VIS-À-VIS practice.
They undertake projects at the intersection of architecture and the built environment, seeking synergies between these two fields. VIS-À-VIS seeks to maintain a certain eclecticism and a diversity of actions and subjects, ranging from urban to architectural project management, including residency projects and urban studies, with a view to building a common language capable of bridging scales, disciplines and the people involved in the transformation of the territory. VIS-À-VIS is a two-time winner of the Europan competition (E13 and E16) and is currently overseeing the design of the public spaces at the Arenberg mining site.
Marion Lacas teaches on the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes in the City and Territory department at ENSA Nantes, whilst Jacques Ippoliti teaches on the Fragments programme at ENSA Paris-Est.