Nicolas was faster than me in sharing the work of our “Third Place” group, during the Collaborative Artefacts Interactive Furniture workshop in bucolic Chateau d’Oex.

Chris O’Shea, Sara Ljungblad, Fabien Girardin, Nicolas Nova, Peggy Thoeny, Kevin Walker and I had six hours to investigate the concept of third place (any place where you neither live nor work) and come up with the idea of a prototype.

The first question we had to solve was “Which third place do we want to focus on?” The café, the corridors of the institute, the bathroom, the park, the entrance?

We soon decided that we wanted to explore the vending machines. They can be found everywhere and answer quite well to the “third place” functions: relaxing, socializing, switching off, etc.

THE VENTING MACHINES: A set of three vending machines to instal in corridors, at the entrance, in the cafétaria of the future EPFL building (more about the building itself later.)