In the Footsteps of Andy Warhol & Timothy Leary: A Visit to Rolf Sachs’ “Olympiahaus”
A ten-minute walk through crisp snow to the outskirts of St. Moritz leads to an unexpected sight: the former Olympic Stadium, now the very unusual home of Swiss art collector, artist and designer Rolf Sachs.
After a very long night at the uber-exclusive Dracula Club, where Sachs is the president, he welcomed 36 guests inside for a private tour of his house as part of Highsnobiety St. Moritz, and we were there.
Originally designed by architect Valentin Koch-Robbi as a stadium for the 1928 Winter Olympics (it was also used for the 1948 games), the building hosted some of the world’s best hockey players and figure skaters before falling into disrepair.
That Sachs tore down, restored, and rebuilt the “Olympiahaus,” as it’s known, was a feat in itself but even just acquiring the home took an Olympic-level effort. “I once [visited the building] with my wife at the time and I said, ’I know what our house is going to be.’ I looked at this building and I knew it,” Sachs says, walking us through his living room. “It took me seven years to get the permit. And I needed a public vote. I had to make some friends to get the vote. They had more articles in the local press about this issue than when Switzerland voted to join the EU.”
Described as Bauhaus-influenced Alpine modernism, the house stands out sharply against Switzerland’s traditional Engadin architecture, with its overt restraint and understated decorative articulation. This building is closer to public infrastructure than a chalet: the surfaces appear continuous and openings read as slits rather than windows.
What brought Sachs to St. Moritz, though? “I ran into Carsten Höller [the artist who installed a pink carousel in front of the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz], at Dracula,” says Sachs. “He said, ‘It's incredible, this atmosphere, how does it happen?’ And I said, ‘You know what? We have a special spirit in the club. We’ve known everybody here for 10, 20, 30, 40 years but we only meet up here, so you don't know them well enough not to like them.’
“In Dracula, I’ll meet someone who says, ‘I'm the owner of this in Hong Kong and I live in the Fiji Islands,’" he continues. "It really is a melting pot of serendipity. You never know what you will see and who you will meet. For all of us, that's one of the most important things in life. Friends are the real wealth.”
Despite the stark exterior of Sachs' home, the interior is expressly not minimalist. It’s closer to a curated cabinet of curiosities, full of life. We sit down in about twenty different historic chairs and soak in the tangible dialogue between Olympic history, modern design classics, and Sachs’ own artworks. There’s a seven-meter glass dining table filled with salt and neon text, the biggest collection of Gerrit Rietveld seating I’ve ever seen, pieces by Charles & Ray Eames, works by Achille Castiglioni, paper lanterns by Isamu Noguchi, vintage Olympic photographs, and a blizzard of winter-sport memorabilia.
The idea for the space is one close to Sachs' own heart: nothing should ever be too serious. He has a sense of humor about art because, as he tells us, humor is central to everything he's involved with.
“It's a pure gut feeling," he says. “I never buy for investment. I buy what I like.”
Art was not an acquired interest for Sachs; it was inherited. His father, Gunter Sachs — businessman, collector, photographer, jetsetter — surrounded himself with artists and celebrities, famously marrying problematic French actress Brigitte Bardot, whose presence lingers in portraits throughout the house.
This exposure to art and its surrounding culture since childhood left a clear imprint on Sachs’ home. Walking through, it feels less like viewing a collection and more like eavesdropping on a lifelong conversation.
“I feel quite complete when I'm in this room, because it touches a lot of things I've seen in my life, a lot of emotions, childhood memories and sports memories, imagination, friendships”, he says, gesturing around the living room.
If anything stands out amidst this deluge of detritus, it's the sheer number of chairs, a subconscious (or maybe very conscious) reflection of Sachs’ love, perhaps need, for socializing.
The crown jewel of Sachs’ auditorium-sized chair stash is Gerrit Thomas Rietvield's first Zag-Zag chair, a collector's item among collectors items. Its pared-back look, indicative of the early 20th-century De Stijl design movement, is reflective of Sachs’ "creative alphabet,” he says. “It was basically the first time that people did things without decoration, without trying to make it look too pompous or styled,” he says. “I always want to make art émotionnel instead of arts décoratifs.”
His favorite type of art to collect is follows this principle. Sachs prefers abstract expressionism, citing Piet Mondrian as one of his favorites. “I am attracted everywhere I go to, every fair I go to, to everything that is abstract expressionism. It’s what I do myself, and it’s something which is very close to me," Sachs says wistfull. "I wish I could have started to collect abstract expressionism in the '20s when it wasn’t that big. Like surrealism, it’s a wave, not a sudden movement. It will stay with us forever.”
For more than a century, creatives have been drawn the Engadin Valley, which St. Moritz sits atop, not just for the spectacular landscapes but also intellectual freedom and cultural curiosity. The resort town was a magnet for thinkers and creatives from Friedrich Nietzsche and Thomas Mann to Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alberto Giacometti, Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol.
“I can tell you a funny anecdote,” Sachs says, winking. “Once, Joseph Kosuth and Andy Warhol came up here. And I had a cousin in the house [where they were staying] 300 meters from here. She was quite a spirited lady. Kosut and Warhol went to visit my cousin and as they entered, a guy walked down the stairs. Who's walking down the stairs? It was Timothy Leary. Timothy Leary was the ‘inventor’ of LSD and, so, he was at the time a fugitive of the American government. Kosuth recognized him, turned around and said, ‘Andy, I think we better live here. This guy fucked up a lot of minds.’”
Later on, Sachs takes us to his gallery, Galerie von Opel, where we can see his latest exhibition, “Allegro,” as he talks the crowd through his process.
“When you think about humans, and how DNA came together, we are all made up coincidentally. We are all imperfect,” he begins. “Coincidence interests a lot of artists, I think. These things are very much me trying to find the aesthetics of coincidence. I'm like a little child. I try to do things. And then I suddenly find something which aesthetically appeals. My art is constantly evolving, but it boils down into: it was the people, the soul, the spirit of the individual.”
Isn't that the entire appeal of St. Moritz? I ask him if he can name the era with the best times — for art, for St. Moritz, for life itself. In the spirit of coincidence, he recalls a friend he had only just run into the night before at Dracula, who had told him, “The best times are always ahead of us.”
