CRAFT 2015

Pushing forward the 2014 agenda, here the idea is to further continue working with free-form surfaces to make them with composite materials using the flexible forming technique.

The idea of design started with Gyroid minimal surface, but to see how further it could be manipulated and deformed to be able to use it as a pavilion. This year’s scenario was more like a negative geometry of a surface as subtracted from its bounding box. This helped to have some regular sides, parallel to the walls of the old building, yet the space inside would allow for the experience of a flexible language of design.

Composite material systems were the initial idea to be used in this work. The important part was to make sure that the flexible formwork system would match the desired material outcome, based on its size and geometry. Polyester resins were the material we chose.

Because of the controllability, it brings, and also its ability to be combined with layers of fiberglass as reinforcement, which gives desired strength and structural stability. Polyester resin is of the ‘unsaturated’ type which is thermo-set, capable of being cured of a liquid or solid state when subject to the right conditions. The polyester resin consists of two essential components: a base resin and a hardener to initiate a reaction whereby the liquid materials will solidify into hard, durable plastic.

For the fabrication, we subdivided the model into 12 pieces to have smaller parts to handle. Then, made a waffle structure, made of CNC cut sheets of MDF, for each piece to act as formwork for our double curve surface. After that we covered the waffle structure with a layer of fabric as the base layer and applied a layer of polyester resin, fiberglass, and again a layer of resin, this would be our composite material. Finally, when the pieces were cured and ready, we had to assemble these 12 pieces to get the final model which then was polished and painted and refined.

Craft 2015 pavilion has been assembled together in Vartan historical house in the central areas of Tehran.