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Architect’s aerial rendering of the Rolex Learning Center, EPFL, Lausanne; closeup of the building (click on photos for larger views)

Photos: EPFL, Sanaa 2007

Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL in Lausanne has received permission to go ahead with its planned Rolex Learning Center, which is destined to become an architectural landmark. From the air it may look like an elegant slice of Swiss cheese, with its perforated top, but on the ground it will give a sense of fluid movement, shifting light and no-borders work space.

Construction will begin 31 August on the building that will serve as an interface between the public and the polytechnic institute.

The 170-metre wave-design space by the Japanese architectural firm Sanaa will dramatically change the main entrance to the campus, currently a mix of parking spaces and scruffy fields. Exhibition space and the EPFL library will be housed in the new building, which will also hold a dining area and individual plus group work spaces.

Architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa have drawn a large open-space area where different functions can be separated by the use of sloping floors but where the emphasis is clearly on making it easier for teams from different disciplines to come together, very much in the EPFL spirit.

Construction is expected to take two years and will require innovative engineering for Sanaa’s waves to work: the spans are longer than 90 metres but thinner than 90 cm.

Losinger has received the construction contract. The cost is estimated at SFr100 million, with private funding putting up half the funds. Among the principal sponsors are: Rolex, Credit Suisse, Nestlé, Logitech, Losinger, the Schnitzler Foundation, and Logitech’s founder, Daniel Borel.

• Possibly one of the world’s most minimalist web sites, Sanaa
• An interview in 2005 with the architects in DesignBroom
• Residential Architect, on Sanaa and the use of light