Rolex Learning Center (english guide)

The novel architectural form of this building, conceived of by the architects of SAANA (winners of the Pritzker Prize in 2010), compelled the building engineers to come up with unprecedented structural, technical and logistical solutions. And yet, once the Rolex Learning Center was complete, the ingenuity required for its construction had become practically invisible in the eyes of the uninitiated. This richly illustrated guide provides, in condensed form, an account of the extraordinary adventure of the realization of the Rolex Learning Center. It explains in detail the context of its construction and brings to light the spatial subtleties of its architecture. In addition, it provides the visitor of the building with all the needed technical information and many novel facts and figures.

The authors, Francesco Della Casa, cantonal architect, Canton of Geneva and former editor in chief of the journal TRACES, and Jacques Perret, civil engineer and editor at TRACES, both followed the progress of this extraordinary worksite from its beginnings and questioned the architects and engineers who carried out the project. They have written numerous articles about the building in other publications. The photographer Alain Herzog provides a detailed visual record of the progress at the worksite on a day-by-day basis. The guide ends with a series of interviews of some of the main actors behind the achievement which is the Rolex Learning Center.