Charlotte Malterre-Barthes
Charlotte Malterre-Barthes is an architect, urban designer, and Assistant Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology–Lausanne (EPFL), where she leads the RIOT laboratory, dedicated to driving systemic change in the construction industry. Her work focuses on contemporary urbanization, material extraction, climate emergency, and social justice, positioning architecture as a critical field for addressing planetary and social challenges.
While Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, she initiated A Global Moratorium on New Construction in 2020, a research project examining current development protocols, later published by Sternberg Press (2025). Her research engages architecture as a political, economic, and material practice embedded within global systems of production.
Malterre-Barthes is a founding member of the Parity Front and the Parity Group, activist networks dedicated to gender equality and diversity in architecture, awarded the Meret Oppenheim Prize in 2023. She holds a PhD from ETH Zurich focused on the political economy of commodities in the built environment.
She is the co-author of several award-winning publications, including On Architecture and Work and On Architecture and Greenwashing (Hatje Cantz, 2024, 2025); Migrant Marseille: Architectures of Social Segregation and Urban Inclusivity (Parenthèses, 2022; Ruby Press, 2020); Eileen Gray: A House under the Sun (Nobrow, 2019); Some Haunted Spaces in Singapore (Editions Patrick Frey, 2018); and Housing Cairo (Ruby Press, 2016).
She has co-curated the 12th International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo (2019) and 8 Questions sur des Sujets Urbains (Bureau des Guides Marseille, 2019). Her work has been exhibited at MoMA, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, and at the Architecture Biennales of Venice, Seoul, Shenzhen, Yerevan, and Tbilisi.
