swissnex Boston

Ben Keel’s Swiss Art School Tour; Part II of IV: ECAL

By Benjamin Keel, graphic design student at the University of Cincinnati and winner of the “24 Hours in the Life of a Swiss Cuckoo Clock” poster design contest. Part of his prize was a trip to Switzerland, to visit some of its top art + design schools. This is part two of a four part series he is writing for our blog. See Part One here.

After our ZHdK visit, we soon departed Zurich for Lausanne. After sharing beers and crashing hard from the long hours of travel, we woke up with a new sense of relaxation. The objectives for the day: visit ECAL, see the city, and get to Geneva by night – a short list compared to the days prior, though it would prove to still be pretty busy. Leaving our heavy bags at the hotel after a savory breakfast of cheese and croissants, Andrew and I boarded the tram and sped to ECAL. 

The building of Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne, or ECAL, is easily discernible from its surroundings by its wavy facade, greeting you with the colorful posters and a lively atmosphere of conversing students. Michael Ghali, an assistant director of the school, was kind enough to guide us on an informative tour of a building that embraces its past as a renovated garment factory; it is now an intensive creative lab for the small body of students.

From the ink splatters of traditional workshops to the dramatic lighting of the photo labs, its creative spaces were an obvious strength of ECAL. Contrasting these closed spaces were the working studios for the Visual Communication and Industrial Design students. Though the air was open in these expansive spaces, the energy was high and focused as everyone around us worked and critiqued. Their creations were spread all over what would usually be so clean. I was so jealous! There were even designated spaces for thought beyond the art: the ECAL Lab and start-up business spaces allow students to combine critical design thinking with engineering and business sense.   

With that, my suitcase expanded with the graduate portfolio and other books I now reference daily. Many thanks to Michael for guiding us through an inspiring display of work!