Three plywood pavilions, designed and built by students in a single semester, held together by dry timber joinery and taken apart just as cleanly.

Collaborators

Patrick Beale (Advanced Timber Concepts) Gwyllim Jahn (Fologram) Brian Nelson (Capital House) Loren Adams (Grimshaw) Dani Rosman (Scott Smalley Partnership) John O'Donnell (Timberbuilt) Luke Davey (Realm Studios) Mark McKenna (City Collective), Fabricator: Timberbuilt Australia, Kilmore Group

Students from Curtin University's School of Design and the Built Environment worked with a local timber prefabrication company, Timberbuilt Australia to design, fabricate and assemble 3 individual temporary timber pavilions. The three pavilions are a result of a Master's of Architecture Elective, ARCH5008: Advanced Architectural Systems co-ordinated by Daniel Giuffre, and supported by David Smith and Andrei Smolik from Intensive Fields Lab (if/LAB). For most students, this was the first exposure to Computational Design and Digital Fabrication. The first half of the semester was focused around educating the students on the benefits of digital design thinking and computational design tools. This included understanding basic structural principles for wood construction, designing for CNC milling and prefabrication and digital workflows. Students were provided with the opportunity to explore new opportunities for design to production processes of small scaled timber structures. They were encouraged to explore and design details that did not require any glue or mechanical fixings, and instead relying on dry-fit connections for easy assembly and disassembly of the structures.

The design and production of these types of complex geometries that include many individual and specific components would not have been possible with out the use of computational design tools such as McNeels Rhino and Grasshopper. The three pavilions were each fabricated and assembled on campus in just 6 days using the facilities provided to us by Timberbuilt Australia, who have just recently relocated to Perth, Western Australia from Melbourne, Victoria. All three structures are made exclusively from plywood supplied by World Wide Timber Traders. The first assignment was treated as small in-class competition whereby students were tasked with designing a small pavilion, with the focus being around design, prefabrication and buildability, budget and programme. Similar to a large scaled project, the students had to consider materiality, procurement of materials, delegation of tasks amongst team team members and a timeline of design development, shop drawing/detailing, fabrication and assembly. A requirement of the unit was that they had to limit the number of mechanical fixings by exploring dry timber joinery details, with consideration to easy assembly and disassembly for circularity.

Project Teams

Structure 1 Students: Kartika Kumalasari (Concept Design), Faris Aftab, Bright Ernest Esim, Richard Honey, Jake Gower, Shani Ward, Ben Richardson, Liuwei Zhan, Wen-Chi Tseng, Eunki Kim, Gianina Elisya Oetomo, Misty Allan, Yanling Wu, Kannigia Putra Liang

Structure 2 Students: Tin Tu (Concept Design), Amanda Yi Chuan Ng, Reyan Adine, Luke Attewell, Harsha Hasmukhbhai Gajjar, Li Ping Bong, Corey Nelmes, Ruhan Nilesh Pimpalay, Firouz Gholami, Rudra Parsotam Rajani, Miang Ei Lim, Sara Muna'am, Zoe Yi Ying Yeoh, Fathima Salim, Tin Tu

Structure 3 Students: Rozhan Taha (Concept Design), Carol George, Yohannes Demissie, Sindhu Ajit Prasad, Brady Gan, Daniela Amidzic, Rouie Roxas, Hunter Brown, Dimity Dennis, Yasmeen Al-Hijazi, Savana Basilio, Dharabahen Rashmikantbhai Mistry, Gio Manlangit, Samrachana Shah, Shavinda Wijesundera, Thao Le, Lewaa Kabli, Mariebeth May, Nhat Quang Huynh, Sherina Lee, Cameron Kendall, Andrew Stok, Olivia Lomma, Leslie Lopez Sagastegui