Johann Watzke, Anne-Fanny Cotting & Aurélie Mindel of EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) in Switzerland shared with us their photographic project on the Rolex Learning Center from SANAA which is the campus hub and state-of-the-art library. More images and a brief description after the break.
It started when the photo club of the EPFL, in association with some staff of the school, launched a call for entries to do an exhibition on the uses and the life inside the, then brand new, Rolex Learning Center, as experienced by the students, by the students. Johann Watzke and two other members of the photo club, Anne-Fanny Cotting (another architecture student) and Aurélie Mindel (chemistry student), pitched the idea and they settled on the idea of having people practicing different winter sports inside the RLC. The space, with the slopes and the overall whiteness, was perfect as a metaphor for the Swiss mountains in winter.
After the concept and their execution proposal was green-lit by the administration, they gathered friends and friends of friends on Facebook. They had them bring their ski equipment and suits early in the morning on a weekend in the middle of may, 2010. They had a great deal of fun staging and shooting the scenes. Even the models enjoyed it, even though they sweated a lot. Then the pictures were exhibited outside the entrance of the RLC, alongside other pictures taken by other students in a more straight-forward and documentary fashion. Now the pictures will be printed as postcards and sold in the bookshop of the RLC.
To view more photographic projects by the students, visit their website here.
