Ten years ago, EPFL’s Laboratory of Urbanism proposed horizontality as a critical lens for urban theory and practice. Since then, the concept has grown substantially richer through theoretical traditions developed across Europe and beyond.

This year’s seminar revisits horizontality not as a closed paradigm, but as a mode of critical engagement with the socio-political, ecological, and economic processes of urbanization. It is approached as a historical, ideological, conceptual, and political question—one intersecting with territorial redistribution, accessibility, solidarity, and spatial justice amid deep socio-ecological transformation. Neither purely top-down nor bottom-up, horizontality invites reflection on spatial organisation, territorial governance, and the conflicts shaping contemporary urbanisation.

Rather than repeating critiques of vertical power and growth-oriented urbanisation, the seminar aims to pluralise perspectives on horizontality as an open concept—one capable of generating new rationalities and spatial imaginaries for future design and socio-political agendas.

The research seminar is organised by Prof. Paola Vigano, Prof.Elena Cogato Lanza, and Flore Guichot. Guests include Prof. Michiel Dehaene, Prof. Catherine Maumi, Prof. Tom Avermaete, Tommaso Pietropolli, Mose Cometta, Prof. Charles Waldheim, Prof. Dean Almy, Prof. Great de Block, Andrea Palmioli, Adria Carbonell Rabassa, Elvira Pietrobon, Nikos Katsikis, Prof. Luca Pattaroni, Prof. Milica Topalovic, and Prof. Antonio Di Campli.

Session 1: Concept and Theory of Horizontality

This session proposes a conceptual and theoretical reflection on the notion of horizontality. It aims to clarify its meanings, genealogies, and uses across philosophy, design and the social sciences, while critically examining its relevance in contemporary debates.

Particular attention is given to decentred and non-hierarchical organisational models—such as “centreless” or distributed forms of organisation—as well as to emerging perspectives that challenge anthropocentric frameworks.
The session also interrogates horizontality in relation to its conceptual counterpart, verticality, exploring how power, governance, and political structures are reconfigured through these spatial and organisational imaginaries.

Finally, it engages with critical traditions of modernity, questioning how horizontality has been theorised, mobilised, and contested within broader critiques of modern social and spatial orders.

Session 2: An Interrupted Modern Project of Horizontality?

This axis proposes a critical historical reflection that examines horizontality as a fundamental component of the modern project, focusing on its partial abandonment, fragmentation, and contemporary reactivation only partial, under new weaker conditions. It interrogates its spatial heritage, the political, institutional, and territorial frameworks that initially enabled its emergence, as well as those that contributed to its decline.

Particular attention is given to the tensions between horizontal ideals and dominant spatial, economic, and governance regimes, which have often limited their translation into durable and sustained practices. This perspective engages with visions that have become obsolete—such as the political project of the welfare state or the spatial and infrastructural ambition of generalised accessibility—while, conversely, reconsidering trajectories once thought exhausted. Notably, it addresses the resurgence of the American sprawl urban model, long presumed to be in decline, yet re-emerging in contemporary forms.

Session 3: Pluralising Urbanisation Perspectives: What Path Lays Ahead?

This track explores not only a shifting gaze on horizontality, but also alternative positionalities. It seeks to question whose knowledge, practices, and territorial rationalities have been excluded from dominant narratives of urbanisation, and how their inclusion might contribute to reshaping the political project of horizontality in the present and the future.
Particular attention is given to contemporary forms of resistance and alternative experiences that are actively reconfiguring horizontality today, opening up new possibilities for its transformation. This final axis is forward-looking, reflecting on current conditions, as well as their possibilities and limits in light of the challenges of our time. It asks how horizontality might be reactivated through emerging forms such as collective governance, situated practices, and alternative spatial imaginaries.