Dezeen Magazine

Evolver by students from ALICE studio at EPFL

Students of the ALICE studio at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have built a wooden structure for viewing the surroundings next to a lake in Zermatt, Switzerland.

Called Evolver, the structure consists of 24 wooden frames arranged to form a tube that visitors can move through, travelling 720 degrees around the structure's axis before arriving back to the start again.

Views of the surrounding landscape are framed by slits between the supports.

Here's some more information from the students:

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EVOLVER

Evolver is an architectural artefact intervening on the panorama surrounding Zermatt.

It was designed and executed by a team of 2nd year students from the ALICE studio at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. In an effort to take full advantage of the site’s extensive and astounding views, the project sits strategically next to the lake Stelli at an altitude of 2536m.

Its structure mainly consists of a succession of 24 rotating frames supporting an enclosed space that visitors are encouraged to enter. As he or she progresses through the space, a concealed but uninterrupted 720° movement is unravelling along a transformed panorama.

This transformation occurs while inside a person is moving along a selective string of openings only to be caught peeling off a sequence of unexpected views from the original landscape.

Wobbling below and above a distant horizon, ground and sky have been reorchestrated into an orbiting panorama by a journey that has already culminated to where it started: A loophole on the skyline.