Weakness as something worthwile. We have spent five days discussing, designing and building plydome structures on our Digital Autumn Workshop 2016, organized by our Zero-Order architecture design collective and studio Basics. Our participants were architecture & civil engineering students and graduates from University of Pisa and Politecnico Milano.
The main goal was to develop a design-to-prudoction process with virtual and physical models, and based on that, as a proof of concept, build a 1:1 structure out of plywood panels.
Together with participants we have constructed virtual models by use of parametric software (Grasshopper, Kangaroo and Karamba) and simulated the structural behavior of our designs. Then we have made a scale model to study the detailing of the boards connection. Meanwhile participants looked into more advanced geometry curvatures using both virtual and 1:10 physical models.
Our final 1:1 structure is built with plywood boards of 5 mm where specific areas were weakened by laser cutting. This “tattooing” was based on analyzing the geometry by use of mentioned software and helped the material to adjust to the designed shape.
This workshop was made possible by support of Karamba software FABlab Toscana and University of Pisa.
Tutors: Giorgio Castellano | Jan Paclt | Rodrigo Rubio | Alessandro Mattoccia
Collaborators: Francesca Chiappa | Giulia Grassi
Participants: Anna Continanza | Chara Picchi | Cristina Braccini | Elisa Betti | Francesco Pasi | Giovanni Inghirami | Filippo Iardella | Marco Mori | Paolo Carboni
You can find more info about our activities here.