First week in Switzerland

Hi everyone,

I am Julian and the first year Ph.D. student in Architecture at Texas A&M University. Regarding thinkswiss program, I am doing the study and workshop at the Media and Design Center, EPFL with Dr. Jeffrey Huang.

I took a very long distance trip in four days. You can find my flight from the picture: China,Shanghai-Atlant-Houston-Amesterdam-lyon-Lausanne; that is almost one circle of the earth.
However, any tired feeling disappeared at the moment when I got on the train from Lyon to Lausanne. That is a very impressive trip with so many great lanscape. The scattered white buildings with red roof look like grow in the mountain; that is, Alps! The beautiful lake, lac Léman, is partly hidden and partly visible.

After arrival at EPFL, I communicated with the professor and did a short presentation to introduce myself and my interested research. Acturally, EPFL has very good environents for studying. Different departments are related each other. Just like my lab, they did joint projects related to architecture, engeering, computer science, climatic and environmental research. As for me, I will be invovled in one or two research projects which are exploring the biological issues and architectural needs in reality. My interest is for energy efficiency from the inspiration of biological shot term adaptation responding to the climatic stimuli, like temperature swings, solar movement or seasonal wind.

For relaxtion, I took much time to walk around the Léman lake and trvelled from Lausanne to a town of France by the boat several times. Great view and great weather!