The Rolex Learning Center by SANAA is a continuous academic interior on the EPFL campus near Lake Geneva, organized as an undulating concrete landscape rather than a sequence of rooms and corridors. Its single main level combines library, study, meeting, dining, and public programs within a field shaped by slopes, patios, curved glass enclosures, and long-span structural shells.

Rolex Learning Center Technical Information

• Architects: SANAA
• Location: Ecublens, Lausanne, Switzerland
• Gross Area: 37,000 m² | 398,265 Sq. Ft.
• Project Years: 2007 – 2010
• Photographs: © Trevor Patt

We would like to make an intimate public space.

– Kazuyo Sejima, SANAA

A Continuous Interior Landscape

The Rolex Learning Center replaces the conventional academic diagram of stacked floors, corridors, and enclosed rooms with a single open terrain. SANAA treats the building less as an object containing programs than as a constructed ground where study areas, library collections, circulation routes, dining spaces, and gathering zones occupy the same spatial field. The plan remains rectangular, yet the experience is governed by curvature, gradient, and changing sightlines.

Floor and roof move in parallel, producing a continuous section in which low valleys, raised terraces, and gentle slopes organize use without relying on walls or stairs. This topographical logic gives the interior a legible but non-hierarchical order. Movement does not follow a prescribed route; it drifts across inclines, around patios, and between pockets of furniture, allowing the user to read the building through bodily navigation rather than signage alone.

The absence of conventional partitions does not produce uniformity. Changes in level establish different acoustic and social conditions, from collective workspaces to more protected reading areas. The project is strongest where these gradients make subtle distinctions between public and quiet zones, although the open plan also depends on careful behavioral and acoustic management to sustain the range of activities it proposes.

Patios, Voids, and Spatial Connectivity

Fourteen glazed patios cut through the building’s footprint, interrupting the continuous floor plate with exterior voids of different dimensions. These openings bring daylight, air, and views deep into the plan, reducing the sense of internal depth that often accompanies large single-floor buildings. They also give the interior a changing perimeter, so that the boundary between inside and outside is encountered repeatedly rather than only at the facade.

The larger patios perform as entrances and social thresholds. Where the undulating slab rises from the ground, people pass beneath the concrete shell before entering the glazed interior, making the underside of the building part of the public sequence. This lifted condition gives the project an unusual civic presence on the campus: the building is not approached through a single frontal doorway, but through a series of arched voids and informal passages.

Inside, curved glass enclosures and smaller rooms form localized spaces for seminars, services, and group work. These elements operate as islands rather than barriers, preserving visual continuity while introducing moments of concentration. Their geometry reinforces the larger spatial language, yet their practical detailing also reveals the tension between an ideal continuous field and the institutional requirements of a functioning library.

Structure as Topography

The building’s apparent smoothness depends on a complex structural strategy. Its primary form is shaped by two reinforced concrete shells developed through form finding to reduce bending stresses across long spans. The shells act as inhabited topography, supporting the architectural ambition of a large uninterrupted interior while allowing the floor to rise and fall with minimal visible obstruction.

Integrated arches, underground prestressed cables, slender columns, and a steel and timber roof system work together to stabilize the undulating geometry. The larger shell spans up to 90 meters, while the roof follows the same wave-like profile through segmented steel beams and curved secondary timber members. In the flatter areas, a grid of slim columns tempers the structural drama, making the interior read as light despite the mass and technical effort embedded in the concrete.

Construction required a high degree of precision. Digitally cut timber formwork, site positioning systems, and carefully coordinated facade tolerances were needed to translate the continuous geometry into buildable components. Each curved glass panel had to respond to movement and deflection independently, while the concrete shell required controlled pouring and reinforcement strategies to preserve both structural performance and surface quality. The result shows how an architecture of apparent ease can depend on intensive technical control.

Campus Context, Climate, and Use

Placed within the EPFL campus near Lake Geneva, the Learning Center functions as a porous academic landscape rather than a closed institutional block. Its low profile allows distant views toward the lake and mountains to remain part of the spatial experience, while the raised edges and glazed perimeter connect the interior to pedestrian movement around the site. The building absorbs campus circulation into its own topography.

The environmental strategy relies on daylight, controlled natural ventilation, insulation, exterior blinds, and lake water cooling. Extensive glazing is moderated by automated louvers, while the patios assist in bringing light and air into the deep plan. These systems support the openness of the interior, although they also introduce visible technical elements that complicate the purity of the roof plane and facade language.

As a university library, the project shifts the emphasis from storage and silence toward encounter, interdisciplinary work, and informal occupation. Students sit on slopes, gather around tables, move through curved passages, and occupy the building as a social terrain. At the same time, the project exposes a productive friction in contemporary academic architecture: the desire for spatial continuity must negotiate acoustics, accessibility, maintenance, furniture, environmental devices, and the everyday needs of a large public institution.

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About SANAA

SANAA is the Tokyo-based partnership of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, founded in 1995. The studio is known for light, fluid, often translucent buildings that dissolve boundaries between spaces and between inside and outside.

Credits and Additional Notes

1. Client: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)
2. Structural engineers: SAPS / Mutsuro Sasaki; Bollinger + Grohmann, Frankfurt; Walther Mory Maier (WMM Bauingenieure), Basel
3. Construction company: Losinger Construction SA, Bouygues Construction group, Bussigny
4. Project architect: Yumiko Yamada
5. Construction supervision: INGPHI SA, Lausanne Energy engineering Sorane SA
6. Other contributors: Holcim, concrete; Freyssinet, prestressed cables; Sottas, roof steel; Ducret-Orges, roof timber; Roschmann, facade system; Warema, louvers; Zumtobel, lighting; ArcelorMittal, Cofrastra 40 roof deck
7. Other contributors: Funding partners Rolex, Logitech, Bouygues Construction, Credit Suisse, Nestle, Novartis, and SICPA