Urbana Installation

I signed up for this particular studio because I want to learn more about materiality, craftsmanship, and get to understand how things come together. 

The project is part of the Root to Roof Initiative, in which we have the wood harvested locally from Urbana and we want to use those materials to give back to the community with architectural designs. Our client is the city of Urbana, and we worked closely with them through out schematic design and construction phase.  

We developed the idea of nonstandard module. Instead of trimming down all the boards uniformly and make them into monotone 2 by 4 planks, we really wanted to preserve the material as much as we can including all the barks and imperfections. People don't often get to see wood at this stage, they either see a tree or a perfectly processed plank. We worked closely with other team to minimize the waste of the wood. The other team took the middle part and left the live edges to us. We then allowed the wood itself to dictate the outcome of the design. We cut an average vertical piece for around 4' to 5' depends on where the knots and breaks are. For every Cypress vertical, we get to have three different textures: raw cut from the chainsaw, smooth jointed surface, and live edge barks.

We opened up the frame in specific angles to create a more dynamic experience. The new layout also help increasing structure stability. We then designed the angles of the tabs so the visibility changes when you walk through the installation. Each surface essentially can be seen as two layers with clean jointed one at the back and live edges up front. The porosity of the screen changes with the angles and the materiality. 

Check out our documentary!!!

Couple pictures from the Nonstandard Studio!

Urbana Installations

Arch Madness 2017 Competition