Campus RTS / Neuer Standort für die RTS (Radio Television Schweiz)

In the development of a project, two lines of reasoning can turn out to be opposed to one another. In this case, the place – the EPFL campus – and the program, which is broad and complex, can be at odds if we try to take on the project from an isolated angle of each.

A project that only addresses functional matters can become autistic, oblivious to the campus. Besides functioning well, the building must find its fundamental character, its essence, in the fact that it is part of the EPFL campus. Here lies its specificity: in the way it relates with the place and in the way the fact of its belonging to it gives it its uniqueness.

We deliberately propose an open scheme in opposition to a closed, compact, autonomous one. We understand that this scheme resolves some fundamental requirements of the competition better. The layout proposed for the new complex addresses a clear brief: an RTS campus within the EPFL campus.

This scheme involves the following advantages over a compact one:
• It makes for greater and better integration of the new complex in the EPFL’s existing campus.
• It generates greater continuity of public-use spaces, especially in relation with the Rolex Center.
• It produces a flow by setting easy connections with the buildings and spaces of the rest of the campus. Functional, visual, and circulatory relationships.
• It allows all the work spaces to be naturally lit and visually connected with the exterior without need for courtyards or in-between spaces.
• It makes the internal functional relationships and the circulation between the different work areas more pleasant, in such a way that workers are always aware that they are in the EPFL campus, in visual contact with its lake and landscape, and not anywhere else.
• It develops a formal scheme with a clear differentiation between the more public zones and the private ones, clarifying the reading and position of each function. The result is a clear-cut image of a program which is broad, complex, and perhaps hard for anyone unfamiliar with it to perceive.
• It allows for the development of a more sustainable scheme (see specific project text).
• It allows formal and real integration in the complex of the current Odisey Building.

In formal terms, the architectural and landscaping strategy for meeting this objective is to create a plinth which, understood in topographic continuity with the current campus, allows free pedestrian movement on it. The programs are organized over it, following a reading of clear-cut volumes.
The plinth itself contains most of the uses for the public and for logistics.