Loop: The Environmental Summer Pavilion 2

This interdisciplinary project is the team work of students from the Faculty of Art and Architecture at the TUL in Liberec and the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences at the CZU in Prague, under the leadership of Marie Davidová (FA CTU in Prague / Collaborative Collective), Šimon Prokop (Collaborative Collective) and Martin Kloda (Archwerk). It is the continuation of the project pareSITE, the Environmental Summer Pavilion published here a year ago. Its goal is to evolve the performance of solid pine wood. The PareSITE project was absorbing humidity during the night while evaporating it during hot summer days. The panelling supported this by warping – increasing the humid air circulation. This year's project took the concept further. The panelling was organised spatially. Left and right sides of the panels in tangential section were combined. Thanks to this, as well as the shape of the structure, the pavilion performed much better.

The concept evolved from origami folded ellipse that was 3D scanned and used as a base for a Grasshopper for Rhino 5 model that generated fabrication drawings. The individual pieces for the structure were cut on a Hundegger Speed-Cut 3 CNC saw at Eurodach and the panelling on HOMAG Venture 06S 3-axis milling machine at the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences at CZU in Prague, where the structure was also mounted by the students.

The Loop Pavilion served as a meeting point and podium for the EnviroCity festival, creating a pleasant environment for its visitors and presenters.

Grasshopper for Rhino 5 model:

The model was created solely in Grasshopper (and its plug-ins) using only two guiding curves in Rhinoceros 5 taken from the 3D scanner. This helped the team to work on the structure even before the final shape of guiding curves was determined. Due to the spatial organization of panels and the nature of pavilion's construction there was a fair amount of data structure to work with besides the geometry. All the elements were simple planar planks, however, the overall shape is perceived as a double curved surface.

Since the shape was complicated in the terms of statics, the team used a plug-in called Donkey to analyse possible weak spots in the construction. Simultaneously, the joints were analysed in different force constellations to find the optimal positioning of fasteners. Another Grasshopper plug-in, Ladybug, was used to estimate the sun's position and energy gain on each panel on the actual site during the installation period so that the panel size could become another layer of complexity.

All participating students learned Grasshopper basics.

List of participating students:

Alena Novotná, Anna Hrušová, Antonín Hůla, Barbora Slavíčková, Jakub Kopecký, Jiří Fáber, Jiří Pokorný, Petr Tůma, Tereza Jílková, Radim Sýkora, Eliška Antonyová, Tereza Lišková, Filip Janata, Tomáš Kytka, Marie Kortanová, Vojtěch Holeček, Martin Vaníček, Jakub Hlaváček and Petr Havelka

Sponsors:

Stora Enso, Rothoblaas, Nářadí Bartoš, Eurodach, Lesy ČR, Nadace Proměny, Natura Decor

For further information, please follow our blog at http://environmentalpavilion.tumblr.com/