This video series is realized in collaboration with ‘Architectures’ — a series presented by the Arts and Culture Bureau — offering unique views into the concepts and forms of built landmarks. every week, we present one building, accompanied by a short video from their youtube channel.
In 2010, the Rolex Learning Center was built near Lake Geneva, a few kilometers from Lausanne, Switzerland, by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA. The concrete and glass structure has been associated with objects such as a moth-eaten flying carpet or a piece of Emmental cheese, but its true function is that of a learning center for the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne.
In a dense, urban area saturated with back-to-back buildings and lacking proper areas for promoting student social life, the management of the school decided to build a space that would function as both a large public plaza and “a temple of knowledge.”
Following a well-versed competition entered by prestigious names like Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Jean Nouvel, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA were awarded the design of the complex for their highly experimental structure.
“In traditional [Japanese] houses, all the elements are linked in a natural way,” explains Kazuyo Sejima. “But in Europe, you start by cutting up the space to define it better, to separate it and avoid ambiguity. There’s a real difference in our conception of space.”
The building is an homage to this philosophy, arranging an extensive program within a five-acre planar situation, thus getting rid of spatial hierarchy and direction.
Interior. Photo courtesy of the Rolex Learning Center.
“The whole building is a great organic variation,” says Nishizawa. “We wanted to make a place that is similar to the way humans move about. People don’t walk straight […] they move in curves organically. Our architecture aims to be as near to human movement as possible.”
The interior is thus dematerialized by the absence of walls and dividers, encouraging the constant exchange of values and conversations central to the purpose of a learning center.
“For us, it’s not a question of empty space in the way Westerners see it,” explains Ryue Nishizawa. “It’s spaces that are an offer of exchange, for people to meet people. Architects always visualize their building in attributing a function to a space, such as corridors that are at first sight merely for moving around, or studies are for working in, but in reality, students take a nap in the studies and work and consult their teachers in the corridors.”
Photo by Marissa Looby.
The Rolex Learning Center was a fabulous technical challenge for the engineers, who succeeded in concealing the structural puzzle of the floating complex below ground and inside the concrete planes. A sole pillar — barely three feet tall and nicknamed “the pillar of discord” because of SANAA’s reluctance to see it there — serves as a crutch to the bearing weight of the building, and is the only column holding the plane from below.
Construction of the Rolex Learning Center. Photo by Tim Tom.
A few months after the inauguration of the building, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa were honored with the prestigious Pritzker Prize, acknowledging the fluidity, precision and ingenuity of their designs.
Enjoy this video feature? You can check out similar movies on buildings like Herzog & de Meuron’s VitraHaus and French architect Jean Prouvé’s House.
The video was directed by Juliette Garcias and coproduced by Françoise Buraux, the Centre Pompidou, the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication Direction de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, ARTE France, les Films d’Ici and Elefant Films, with the support of the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée.
