Opening ceremony: 10 years of the Rolex Learning Center

25.05.2020

13:00 – 14:30

Video in English here

Images of the ceremony here

 

A true emblem of EPFL, the Rolex Learning Center is celebrating its first decade with a series of exceptional events. At the heart of the EPFL campus, the Rolex Learning Center is a unique place. A space dedicated to knowledge, a learning and study laboratory, an international cultural center and a place of conviviality with its cafes and restaurants, this building welcomes, over more than 20,000 m2, students, researchers and the general public.

 

The opening ceremony of the festivities will be held on Tuesday, May 25 and will celebrate the first decade of the Rolex Learning Center in the presence of Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Yumoko Yamada. Their practice claims a very pure, ascetic architecture, paying the greatest attention to detail, in a Japanese reinterpretation of modernity paying specific attention to spaces promoting communication between users.

During this ceremony, the sources of inspiration and visions for the future of the Rolex Learning Center will be presented and illustrated by:

  • Martin Vetterli, President of ’EPFL
  • Patrick Aebischer, former President et  honorary professor at EPFL
  • Kazuyo Sejima and Yumiko Yamada, architects, SAANA

Blue Mind

How to discover an exceptional place through body and mind? Like revisiting known spaces that we no longer look at? How to feel and appreciate the fluidity of a place?

The ceremony will be followed by a danced and filmed stroll proposed by the company Utilitié Publique, directed by Corinne Rochet and Nicholas Pettit. An unusual exploration of the building with four dancers who will move through the fluid space of the RLC.

Martin Vetterli, President of EPFL © Olivier Christinat \ EPFL 2019
Patrick Aebischer, President of EPFL from 2000 to 2016 © Murielle Gerber \ EPFL 2016
Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (c) EPFL Alain Herzog \ EPFL 2010