snøhetta and barth create six spaces for exploration at le rosey boarding school

Le Rosey creates new spaces to learn

A glance at the new rooms at Swiss boarding school Le Rosey inevitably brings back memories of childhood mornings. For much of Western society, those long days unfolded in monotonous, almost institutional spaces that could have been photocopies of the school next door, were it not for the occasional murals a teacher with a creative itch had insisted on using to decorate the classroom.

Le Rosey’s students already experienced a somewhat different environment before this intervention. Founded in Rolle in 1880, it is Switzerland’s oldest and largest boarding school and one of Europe’s most famous. Its 450 students, drawn from more than 70 countries, experience an educational model known for its progressive learning methods. The recent transformation of six of its rooms is proof of this.

all images @ tobias kaser

An architectural statement of intent

The school’s commitment to fostering creativity, collaboration and discovery as ways of learning is amplified in its Impact Space, an environment created to nurture entrepreneurial thinking and encourage meaningful contributions to the wider world. It is here that Snøhetta has designed six new spaces with the collaboration of barth.

Each space focuses on a way of learning. Conceived as immersive environments with personalities of their own, the rooms invite exploration, reflection or dialogue through their names, chosen color palettes and textures, and furniture arrangements.

challenge of creating six rooms in historic boarding school

The starting point was a series of structurally irregular spaces with barely any parallel walls. Collaboration with barth, which engineered, manufactured and installed the custom joinery for each space, was essential to realizing the architects’ vision.

Throughout the process, the company and the architects worked together to resolve the unforeseen challenges posed by the original spaces, finding innovative solutions to bring the products of Snøhetta’s imagination to life.

The first room in this ecosystem is the Knowledge Room. Inspired by a forest and centered on self-directed discovery as a learning method, the room is dotted with inclined, tree-like columns that incorporate bookshelves, seating and displays through cantilevered platforms.

Next is the Actis Virtus Room, which reimagines the Harkness method, an approach to learning through discussion on equal terms. Dominated by a large oval table, the room features an overhead structure that mirrors the table’s shape, integrates lighting and supports seats that hang like swings.

The Rooted in Peace Room, meanwhile, draws inspiration from a Japanese tea house to encourage introspection, while the Reflection Room, with mirrored surfaces that return distorted images, invites users to look beyond tangible reality.

In the Curiosity Room, an S-shaped curtain system plays with the concept of privacy by revealing and concealing different areas. Finally, the Unafraid to Be Room offers a small, immersive amphitheater in which to practice public speaking.

How the project’s challenges were resolved

To realize the architects’ vision, barth took responsibility for almost all the custom-built interior elements, providing an unusual degree of flexibility that allowed an abstract, creative idea to become a tangible project.

Each of the six rooms presented its own challenge, and all required technical solutions tailored to their particular characteristics. In the Knowledge Room, for example, surfaces had to withstand substantial loads while appearing exceptionally light; in the Actis Virtus Room, the suspended chairs were a feat of design; and in the Curiosity Room, extensive technical coordination made it possible to support heavy fabric from only a few attachment points.

The greatest challenge, however, was the Unafraid to Be Room. Central to the concept was the creation of a fully immersive orange landscape, requiring transitions between materials to be as imperceptible as possible and construction elements to remain concealed. Together, Snøhetta and barth created a continuous surface that flows throughout the room without obvious interruptions.

From the setting to what happens within it: a space conceived to foster critical thinking, spur creativity and inspire innovative ways of learning has itself been built through a collaboration in which innovation and lateral thinking were essential. This is not a traditional classroom. Nor will it host conventional lessons. It is a new way of creating, conceived precisely to shape tomorrow’s creative minds.

project info:

project: La Rosey educational spaces

architect: snøhetta
company: barth | @barth.interiors