Cultural Heritage & Innovation Center

Welcome to the EPFL Cultural Heritage & Innovation Center

Known as “Metamedia Center” from 2010 to 2020, the principal objectives of our team are :

1. Digitize and preserve audiovisual collections and heritages of major importance in Switzerland or all accross the world
2. Enrich and add value to such collections, organizing research and innovation projects with EPFL laboratories, start-ups, and partners

When digitized, the collections are turned into Research Infrastructures. They become a unique material in education and research, available as a playground to the students and to the innovation communities at EPFL and all around the world.

The Montreux Jazz Digital Project is the leading project of the Center since 2010. Defined in collaboration with the Claude Nobs Foundation, it drives activities in many labs and partners of EPFL, with hundreds of researchers involved, addressing a large range of domains from technology to archiving, sociology or art.

In 2019, as part of a collaboration with the Swiss Space Center and the Swiss Space Office, our Center launched the project to digitize the archives of Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier. Entering its last phase, this work will make the content available to the entire space community, Swiss and international. As a testimony, the collection will highlight the trajectory of Claude Nicollier. It will give rise to future collaborations involving EPFL and its partners, in the service of education and research.