Questions on panels

Should our panels be rigid enough to be self-standing?
If they are grids, could be made of squares, rectangles or may be triangles?
Could them host different coverings like pierced panels or branches?

Ville Hara/Wood Studio workshop (Helsinki University of Technology, Department of Architecture), Korkeasaari Zoo lookout tower, Helsinki, Finland, 2002 (photos by Jussi Tiainen from www.e-architect.co.uk)

Hugh+Howard Miller, Constellation Bar, Liverpool 2014 (photos by Robert Holmes from www.dezeen.com)

Casa del fiume, Parco fliviale Gesso e Stura, Cuneo, Screen with branches

Roberto Conte, Teatro naturale, Arte Sella, Borgo Valsugana (from www.viatrentina.it)

Marco Paolini e I mercanti di liquore performing at the Teatro Naturale, Arte Sella, 2007 (from www.artesella.it)

Teamwork 11_Prototyping!

Prototyping session with Alberto Seita: building of the 1:1 junctions, of a panel and a frame composed by small sticks. Choice of using wooden connection elements.

Brainstorming on Details

Brainstorming on the junction details on a paper tablecloth!

Teamwork 10_Meeting with a Craftsman

Meeting with Alberto Seita architect and craftsman to discuss and develop the junction of the building system, talking also of the kind of wood to be used (multilayered vs massive) and of other building features from how to touch the ground to how to stand against strong winds.
Choice of the dimensions of three versions of the junction to be prototyped next week.
Transfer to a craft shop to choose the wooden panels to use to build the 1:1 scale prototypes: a multilayered panel 18 mm thick.

On Looking and Learning

Louis Agassiz, naturalist and professor at Harvard at the beginning of last century, used an unconventional method to make his students understanding the importance of observation.
I'm quite sure this method can lead to intriguing results in architecture as well.
Agassiz's way of acting is clearly and synthetically described by the writer David McCullough in an interview for "Paris Review" (you find the complete interview here):

Would you tell us about the motto tacked over your desk? 

It says, “Look at your fish.” It’s the test that Louis Agassiz, the nineteenth-century Harvard naturalist, gave every new student. He would take an odorous old fish out of a jar, set it in a tin pan in front of the student and say, Look at your fish. Then Agassiz would leave. When he came back, he would ask the student what he’d seen. Not very much, they would most often say, and Agassiz would say it again: Look at your fish. This could go on for days. The student would be encouraged to draw the fish but could use no tools for the examination, just hands and eyes. Samuel Scudder, who later became a famous entomologist and expert on grasshoppers, left us the best account of the “ordeal with the fish.” After several days, he still could not see whatever it was Agassiz wanted him to see. But, he said, I see how little I saw before. Then Scudder had a brainstorm and he announced it to Agassiz the next morning: Paired organs, the same on both sides. Of course! Of course! Agassiz said, very pleased. So Scudder naturally asked what he should do next, and Agassiz said, Look at your fish.

I love that story and have used it often when teaching classes on writing, because seeing is so important in this work. Insight comes, more often than not, from looking at what’s been on the table all along, in front of everybody, rather than from discovering something new. Seeing is as much the job of an historian as it is of a poet or a painter, it seems to me. That’s Dickens’s great admonition to all writers, “Make me see.”

If you are interested to read the full description by Samuel Scudder's of his experience with professor Agassiz, "In the Laboratory with Agassiz", you find it here.

And since now, Look at your fish!

LB

Georges Braque, Pool mosaic, Fondation Maeght, Vence (France) from www.architecturaldigest.com

Teamwork 9_Elements Design

The analysis work on crossed elements and on plates/panels led to select three elements/systems examined with models and drawings.
A triangular frame, a junction made by four crossed plates and modules of parallel planks were presented and discussed to sort out their flexibility, the potential developments, their suitability to our needs.
The discussion led to the choice to develop and deepen the crossed junction, at first analysing its possible dimensions and the typology and materiality of the panels or frames that could be connected by it.

The crossed junction selected for development

Site Visit by Bike

On May 29th the students team visited our design site by bike, starting from the Casa del Parco in Cuneo, the park offices that will host the design session and the lecture during next August's atelier.
From the Gesso river the team crossed the city to descend to the Stura Valley and ride southeastward among fields and woods to the canal area in Vignolo.
The main design area is along a straight section of the path aside the lower canal. It is bordered by a double old chestnut row and by younger ashes and poplars.
There we had the first sightseeing and met the park staff including a technician of the Municipality of Vignolo.
(photos by Yichen Song, Sammy Zarka and atelier mobile team)

Panoramic view of the design area

Ashes and chesnuts. A spot viewpoint to the Maritime Alps.