Segundo Lugar_Re-Imagining Wood Challenge

 

How can the natural attributes of wood commonly seen as disadvantages be re-imagined as assets to create novel, sustainable products?

There was a time when wood and wood fibre based materials were used for almost everything in the built environment. Now non-renewables like plastics, metals and concrete have supplanted many of these products. For example, cellophane was largely replaced by plastic wrap and wood street light standards have been largely replaced by concrete or metal. In many cases and in order to compete, we have engineered wood to do what other materials already do well. This is a good thing, but we believe there are additional opportunities for innovation if wood was allowed to do what it does best, naturally. What if wood’s ability to rot, expand and contract or char when burned were reframed as attributes to be designed in, rather than engineered out? Using the past for clues, that is what we will explore in this challenge.

Wood is one of the most commonly used materials across all kinds of industry, especially building, manufacture, transport and packaging. Huge amounts of wood are used once and then thrown away - despite the fact that it is still perfectly re-usable. This project re-uses and recycles small pieces of wood to build a playground for children. “Topographic Mantle” is the name of the project that creates a space for activities that offer physical training. Topography allows the user (children) to make from simple movements to complex motion sequences requiring the action of the whole body. The idea was to generate a LANDSCAPE inspired by the topography of the land, nature and organic forms, where the angle 90 ° and the straight lines appear not exist. The geometry is constructed by sections, which are superimposed one on top of each other to finally conform structural layers that construct

the double curvature of a topographic surface. Providing a space for recreation, play and the development of locomotors and sensory integration through play. The morphology of the project was born from the inspiration of a repertoire of natural forms. Taking as reference shapes created by nature with high-level functionality, structural capacity and experimenting with parametric design concepts. The parametric design allowed computational process of complex three-dimensional geometries. Instead of constructing the surface itself, "sectioning" is a design strategy that works with the contour of the geometry, forming a series of layers to overlap with each other to produce the form. The raw material for the construction of the project it’s wood pine, which was dimensioned in pieces of 26 cm. Parametric design played a vital role in the projection of the proposal, allowing to connect dimensions and variables to the geometry, to performed quickly and without re-drawing, design modifications.