Continuing with our nocturnal exploration of the Rolex Learning Center at EPFL, one of our local universities … (part 1 is here).

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNVyBgXK9rY?rel=0&w=510&h=383]

Even though it was nearly 10pm, the place was still open and there were a few students studying inside. Standing in the middle of one of those open circular space, one can have a 360-degree view of who is in the building. We wandered into the campus, walked around underneath the ribbon-like structure, and even entered one of them.

This is what the EPFL’s press release said about the building:

The Rolex Learning Center is a large one room space. Five external patios, intimate court- yards are sympathetically landscaped with informal seating, providing outdoor relaxation areas for visitors and students. …  The floor undulations and curved patios not only softly divide the different programs but also connect in a gradual and calm manner.  …  Spread over one single fluid space of 20,000 sq meters, it provides a seamless network of services, libraries, information gathering, social spaces, spaces to study, restaurants, cafes and beautiful outdoor spaces. It is a highly innovative building, with gentle slopes and terraces, undulating around a series of internal „patios‟, with almost invisible supports for its complex curving roof, which required completely new methods of construction.

The undulating structure looked like a landed spaceship – Close Encounter of the Third Kind-like, or it is a bioweapon research center.  The light and the glass walls gave everything inside a whitish green, eerie Sci-Fi look – that’s the impression we had that night.

One of the major engineering issue that had to be resolved was the issue of building “perforated shells” – which gave the Swiss cheese appearance of the building (aerial view which I cannot provide, but see the official video below). Due to its unconventional form, the actual construction is an entire story of its own.

In the beginning, one rhetoric question that was asked about investing into such a building was that, given the efficiency of electronic information distribution, why should students physically come to a building to retrieve those information – why build a library ?

The building has been called many things during its construction: the pancake, the slice of cheese, the gadget, the layered cake of difficulties, the bad example and the Rolling Center. I suppose it can be a really good space for skateboarding too. I will return to look at the building and see how it is being used, now that almost three years have passed since its opening.

This is the official video.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O0OqdIoOPQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hd=1]

To read more, here is a link to an article by the New York Times about the building.

When writing this in 2013, I was aided by a book “Rolex Learning Center” published by EPFL press (whose office is  inside the building), a gift from a professor at EPFL. This hard back book appears to be out of print now.

But an English guide is apparently in print.