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Body Building Installation – TAB 2015

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ARCHITECTURE

PART

 

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

PART

 

LOCATION

Talinn, Estonia

 

STATUS

Completed 2015

Designed by the young architects Siim Tuksam & Sille Pihlak of PART (Practice for Architecture, Research and Theory) the Body Building installation is an urban extension of Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB) main exhibition “Body Building” in the Museum of Estonian Architecture. The exhibition is exploring hybrid forms of construction where cutting-edge technology and science meet the self-driven variability of material systems and degrees of freedom and control define an outcome of multiplicity within tolerance, trying to find a balance between the unruly and the predictable – body and building.

Plan © PART
Elevations © PART

The installation, located on the main artery of Tallinn city, is a conceptual beacon and guide for the 3 main venues of TAB – the Estonian Centre of Architecture, Viru square and the Museum of Estonian Architecture. The freeform structure (body) is the result of algorithmic negotiations between ideal geometries like lines, planes, circles and cuboids (building). By using computational methods the installation brings softer, more natural forms and materials into the otherwise cold and cuboid city centre.

The pavilion is a contemporary take on wooden post and beam construction, manufactured on a fully automatic wood house production line, where on a daily basis traditional log houses are produced. The project aims at bringing algorithmic design into industrial production and igniting a discussion on the future of wooden architecture between the local wood industry, engineers and architects.

Construction Details © PART

The 236 unique elements of the Body Building installation were generated using widespread algorithmic design and engineering software (Rhino, Grasshopper, Karmaba3D). The 95×95 mm lumber elements (Narvo – nordic timber), with 500 different joints were 5-axes CNC milled on a Hundegger 2Ki in 10 hours (MountainLoghome) and assembled with 2000 screws (Würth) in 5 days by volunteers. The fully algorithmic 3d model was developed by PART over a period of 6 months, resulting in a design tool, where the base geometry is interchangeable within seconds and various parameters of the design are controlled by numeric input. Using the Karamba finite element calculation plugin, all the structural changes are constantly recalculated and optimized.

Karamba Setup © PART
Karamba Setup © PART
Karamba Analysis © PART
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