PRESS RELEASE ROLEX CONTINUES PARTNERSHIP WITH INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITION – LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA – AS 2016 EDITION OPENS Venice, 26 May 2016 – Rolex is supporting the world’s most important architecture exhibition, which runs from 28 May to 27 November in Venice. This marks the second of three editions (2014, 2016 and 2018) with Rolex as the exclusive Partner and Official Timepiece of the International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. “We are very proud of our association with the Architecture Biennale,” said Arnaud Boetsch, Director Communication & Image at Rolex. “Architecture and watchmaking have much in common, as both must achieve a perfect rendering of function and aesthetic pleasure. This can only be accomplished by meeting the highest standards of precision and performance, something we at Rolex excel at and which is being showcased at the exhibition in this historic city over the next six months.” Rolex’s success as the world’s leading luxury watch brand can be traced back more than a century to company founder Hans Wilsdorf who was motivated by a sense of excellence at every level. He created nothing less than a new architecture for the watch case, making the iconic Oyster the first waterproof watch, one that, like great buildings, has stood the test of time. In the design and construction of its own buildings over the past 50 years, Rolex has demanded the same values of excellence manifest in its watchmaking. The company’s two newest buildings, a tower in Dallas, Texas, by Kengo Kuma and a building in Milan by Italy’s own Studio Albini, are the focus of an exhibition presented by Rolex in the Giardini. Great architects such as Lord Norman Foster, Daniel Libeskind, Frank Gehry and Ryue Nishizawa have also assisted the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative as programme advisors. Rolex mentors who have participated since the Initiative’s beginnings in 2002 are Álvaro Siza, Kazuyo Sejima, Peter Zumthor and, currently, Sir David Chipperfield, who himself was the curator of the Biennale Architettura in 2012. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT PRESS & PUBLIC RELATIONS Rolex SA Virginie Chevailler [email protected] T +41 (0)22 302 26 19 ROLEX PRESS ROOM pressroom.rolex.com The quest for excellence Just as great buildings are created by visionary architects, visionary watchmakers create watches that exceed the highest standards of precision and performance. Rolex has long acknowledged a profound synergy between the two disciplines – which both spring from the twin forces of innovative thinking and powerfully creative ideas. In its own way, the miniature architecture of a watch is like a building, which is refined until it seems effortlessly resolved. At Rolex, excellence – both technical and aesthetic – is always the goal and, in the quest for that supreme blend of form and function, minute attention is applied to the design and fabrication of each tiny detail. Rolex’s support for the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, for three editions from 2014–2018, emerges naturally from its commitment to architecture of the highest quality. The company is proud to be associated with the world’s most important forum for thinking about the built environment and how it can shape the future. The founder of Rolex, Hans Wilsdorf, was visionary. In 1926, he revolutionized watchmaking, launching his most famous timepiece, the Oyster. Now celebrating its 90th anniversary, the Oyster remains the perfect encapsulation of an idea that gave new shape to the future. It was the first watch that the wearer could rely on everywhere – on land and in water, in extreme heat and in biting cold. Its elegant aesthetic was matched by a technical brilliance that changed forever what a watch could be. Since then, constant technological refinements, including new movements, have kept it as the gold standard of watch design, and it is still held in reverence. Like a great work of architecture, it has stood the test of time. Building the future Two new Rolex buildings, in Dallas and Milan, have continued the company’s commitment to outstanding architecture, a reflection of Rolex’s ethos of design and innovation of the highest quality. The company’s building projects have involved internationally acclaimed architects, including Pritzker Prize winner Fumihiko Maki, who designed two Rolex buildings in Japan ; the Lititz Watch Technicum in Pennsylvania, designed by the late and celebrated American architect, Michael Graves ; and the Pritzker Prize-winning Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, whose groundbreaking Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, Switzerland, is critically acclaimed. Sejima was the director of the 2010 International Architecture Exhibition, and her theme was “People Meet in Architecture”. Rolex’s ties to these exceptional architects and to the International Architecture Exhibition are a reflection of its pursuit of excellence. In Milan, one of Italy’s leading practices, Studio Albini, has delivered a Rolex service and logistics centre that can genuinely be described as precision-made, in keeping with the company’s dedication to precision and performance. In Milan, Rolex’s And now, in Dallas, Texas, the great Japanese architect, Kengo Kuma, is producing ultra-modern service and a Rolex office building whose form and environmental qualities have set new logistics centre, by Studio benchmarks in the city. Kuma, who was chosen to design the centrepiece of the Kengo Kuma’s design for a Rolex Albini, has a dynamically building in Dallas rotates like a moving, super-precise 2020 Tokyo Olympics – the National Stadium – has an international reputation based slightly twisted deck of cards. metal façade. on his mastery of highly original connections between buildings, sites and nature. A dynamic tower for Dallas With the Dallas tower by Kuma, Rolex will be introducing a completely new kind of office architecture to the city. The building is on a site in the Harwood District near Rolex’s original 1984 building – the first office block ever built in uptown Dallas. “The theme of the design is the integration of the land with the building,” Kuma explains. “Usually, office buildings are independent monuments, and the building is separate from the land around it. So I thought of starting with the landscape by connecting the building to the ground with a low Japanese castle wall, and twisted the building to show the continuous movement from terrain to building, from the bottom to the top – the dynamic form of the building.” In the construction of its own buildings, as in its watchmaking, Rolex has always embraced innovative ideas and the Dallas tower is no exception. The adventurous and environmentally sophisticated design is typical of the work by Kuma, whose first building, in 1988, was a small, irregularly formed bathhouse in Izu composed of metal, bamboo and concrete. Since then, the way Kuma uses natural light, space and subtly modulated surfaces in his approach to buildings – “dissolution and disintegration”, as he puts it – continues to be unique. His architecture has been featured at four editions of the International Architecture Exhibition and this year his work will be presented again. Kuma’s design approach produces highly diverse buildings, such as the Asakusa Culture Tourism Centre in Tokyo, which resembles a stack of eight different kinds of houses ; the Daiwa Ubiquitous Computing Research Building, with its exquisitely meandering veils of cedar shingles ; the Plastic House in Tokyo, whose walls are made of 4 mm-thick plastic, with added fibre, rice paper or bamboo ; and the Suntory Museum of Art, whose vertical ceramic louvres recall historic musougoshi screens. Historic Japanese architecture has also supplied the quite literal bedrock of the design of Rolex’s new Dallas office, which will be used as a sales and service centre. Its base is surrounded by a low rock rampart, a reference to the ishigaki walls around Japanese castles in the Edo period. In the Dallas building, the rampart is seen more as a point of connection with the city than as a defence from it. The floors of the seven-storey building rise from its raised base at the corner of Harry Hines Boulevard and Moody Street, and rotate like a slightly twisted deck of cards. Kuma has a philosophy of integrating nature into his buildings. The way Kuma uses natural light, space and subtly modulated surfaces is unique. His architecture has been featured at four editions of the International Architecture Exhibition and again this year. “Creating an in-between space is a very important tradition in Japanese homes... But it is also a good solution for the hot summer climate in Dallas,” Kuma says. Kuma is interested in blurring the boundaries between interiors and exteriors and takes great care to create in-between spaces and verandas in his buildings. Courtesy of Sadafumi Uchiyama Courtesy Kuma has a philosophy of integrating nature into his buildings, encouraged by Rolex, which, as a company championing the natural world, was keen to bring nature right into the heart of the busy streets of Dallas. The projecting edges of each floor-deck are covered with plants, and there are also gardens in the open, two-storey event space at the top of the building, and around its base – a “greening” provided by third-generation landscape designer Sadafumi Uchiyama. The event space is planted with trees, and the base around the building also has small pools and waterfalls. Also typical of Kuma’s work are the design references to historic Japanese architecture. He is particularly interested in blurring the boundaries between interiors and exteriors : he always takes great care to create in-between spaces and verandas, known as engawa, in his buildings. “Creating an in-between space is a very important tradition in Japanese homes, and its function is ambiguous. But it is also a good solution for the hot summer climate in Dallas,” he says.